Trench Sheet or Sheet Pile?

Left: Service Crossings within an Excavation

We have all been there.

The client needs to install a manhole with multiple crossing services in the ground.

There is no way a shoring box is going in around all the obstructions, so the client starts talking about sheet piling it.

The engineer on site thinks shoring is a day at the beach and the sales rep from the local shoring equipment rental company starts calculating the bonus he will make now sheet piles are mentioned.

Right: Sheet Piles

But sheet piles are not trench sheets.

Sheet piles are heavy duty interlocking profiles designed generally for deep excavations.

They assist in the retention of water ingress & material ingress thanks to their interlocking clutches.

They are associated with both temporary and permanent works and can even be designed to be axially loaded as load bearing piles.

Left: Trench Sheets with Hydraulic Bracing

Trench sheets are a lapped sheet which looks similar to corrugated steel. They do not interlock, have much less bending capacity and do not prevent the ingress of water and loose material.

Sheet piles are limited in their installation method, are generally required to be pre-driven via vibro or impact hammer, sometimes following pre-auguring or slit-trenching of the ground.

Trench sheets however can be installed using not only a pre-driven approach, but also using push & dig, dig & push, slit trench and zero toe methods by hand - making them ideal to install around crossing services.

At ENSHORE, our engineers have been designing shoring for excavations for almost 15 years. We can tell a trench sheet from a sheet pile and can provide engineering and design support for all ground shoring projects.

If you have a project that needs some earth retention designing and you’d like to use a consultancy that know what they are doing, then please, click here.