Are micropiles proprietary products? 1

[GalileoG]

Are micropiles propietery products? Should an EOR be designing micropiles or should it be left up to the contractor? What is industry standard? Thank you.

 

[JedClampett]

Micropiles, in general, are not proprietary. They're just small pipe sections used as piles.
As far as standard industry practice, I'm not sure. But when I've used them, I had our Geotechnical Engineer make recommendations, and we located and specified them. Leaving design details up to contractors is a dangerous game. All it does is delay arguments until the submittal phase.

 

[Teguci]

EOR is responsible. Find a local contractor who will bid on the job and ask him what system he likes to use. Its quite possible that the final system installed will be proprietary (I mean who wouldn't copyright the process of shoving a pipe into the ground), but that doesn't excuse the EOR from understanding and designing the final system.

Important questions need to be answered including - grout process, reinforcement lengths, uplift design, etc...

Geotech needs to address the question regarding the maximum potential unbraced length for the piles.

Although half the section of a micropile is steel, I've found that any lateral loads are best handled by battering.

 

[Whoofbang]

There is a free design guide for micropiles on this page. The 36th item down.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/engineering/geotech/library_listing.cfm

 

[dhengr]

Whoofbang:
Thanks much..., there is a fair amount of good info. contained within that listing. That’s a whole book shelf worth.