Pre Bored Steel H Piling System

Engineering Essay
Published: 23, March 2015

Although Hong Kong is featured of its Skyscrapers all over the world, and it
seems that H-Piling system may not have enough bearing capacity to their
superstructure, there are still many servicing buildings and small-scale
infrastructure developing, the loading of which is capable to be borne by H-Piling
system, in the city. In the following words, a brief introduction over Pre-Bored
Steel H-Piling system will be presented associated with related cases applying
such kind of piling system in Hong Kong in order to draw a more detailed picture
over the application of Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling system in Hong Kong.
The principle of Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling system is similar to the Bored Piling
system. Both of them are replacement pile and require boring the initial hole on
the site for the insertion of the temporary or permanent steel casing, depending
on its design. After the completion of the boring process, the soil and rock inside
the steel casing will then be extracted and the workers will place the
reinforcement material inside the steel casing. That is the major variation
between Bored Piling and Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling System. For Bored Piling, the
reinforcement bars will be bent in order to form the circular cage (Figure 1).
However, H Steel Pile will be the reinforcement material in Pre-bored H-Piling
system. Grouting is then started after placing reinforcement material to form the
pile.
Since the diameter of Bored Piling can be larger than Pre-Bored H-Piling, the
former one can typically take up more loading than the latter one. Therefore,
small-scale construction project is most likely to use Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling
system in Hong Kong. The cases introduced later are small in scale, but they do
play an important role in our city.
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Figure 1: Reinforcement Bar for Bored Piling
Figure 2: H-Pile for Reinforcement in Pre- Bored H-Piling system
The first case being examined is the construction of Queen Mary Interchange
near Queen Mary Hospital and Pok Fu Lam Road. It is a road improvement
project initiated by the local government at the two junctions, which are in
Sassoon Road and Bisney Road with Pok Fu Lam Road, on Hong Kong Island.
The aim of this project is to relieve the congestion problem existing in these roads
by constructing a new interchange, comprising of several bridges.
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Figure 3: Model of proposed development

Figure 4: Queen Mary Interchange " Still in the progress of construction

As we can see in the model of proposed development (Figure 3), the
interchange, which located at the bottom of the figure, is locating on a slope.
Since the the soil in slope exert a considerable amount of bending and tensile
stress, according to Tomlinson (1994), H-pile is able to withstand such kind of
extreme situation due to its unique H design. Therefore, the authority concerned
decided to build the interchange with Pre-Bored Drill-in Steel H-Piles. Moreover,
the short erection time and economical construction cost are also the reason to
make use of such kind of piling system in this project. According to
Kumaraswamy, Mohan (2002), the whole process of developing a Pre-Bored drillin H pile, i.e. pre-drilling, drilling and grouting, can be finished in 3 working days.
We can also see that the site is not so spacious enough to place some largescale machinery during the pile development. The development of Pre-Bored
Drill-in Steel H-Piles can overcome this problem because the diameter of this pile
is only 600mm in this case The size of drilling techniques can be controlled and
fitted into the congested site.
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Figure 5: The congested site on a steep slope
in this construction of Queen Mary Interchange
Before the development of pile in this project, several raw materials and tools are
required to present. Here is the table showing what are needed,
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Circular steel casing of internal diameter 600mm and thickness 25mm
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Steel H-pile, which will be inserted in the steel casing
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Hydraulic hammer mounted on crawler crane

Table 1: Major Material list for constructing

pile of Queen Mary Interchange
In the very first stage of developing Pre-Bored Drill-in Pile in this project,
engineers will have a pre-drilling through the soil layers and rock within the site in
order to identify the underground condition, such as the rock head levels and the
strength of the soil. It is an important procedure since it will determine the type,
length, etc of the pile. Any wrong measurement, especially overestimate the
soil/rock supporting capacity, will make the whole project lose ground because
the whole structure will be ruined, the typical case is the Block E and F of Yu Chui
Court, demolished after discovering the corruption scandal, which developed by
piles shorter than the standard and cause possible dangerous to its users .

After the completion of soil investigation and analysis, the engineers would then
design and choose the most suitable piling system for different project. In the
construction of Queen Mary Interchange, the engineers found out that the Prebored piling system is suitable for construction of high-way bridges at the steep
slope on the site. The site-workers firstly pressed the circular steel casing inside
the ground through the help of Hydraulic Hammer which is mounted on a crawler
crane. The reason to plug the steel casing into the ground was to prevent the soil
from collapsing inside the hole, which would be placed H-pile inside it, during the
process of drilling.
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Figure 6: Inserting circular steel casing into ground by hydraulic hammer
mounted on crawler crane
Figure 7: Connecting two steel casings by welding when the length is not enough
The process in Figure 7 happened when the steel casings being installed were
not long enough to reach the target depth into the soil. By welding the end of two
steel casings, the total length of it can be extended. For the inadequate length of
H-Pile, their length can also be extended through welding.
When the steel casing reached the bed rock level and formed a socket, the next
stage is to remove those soil and rock inside the steel tube, as shown in Figure 8.
The ground was drilled with a hammer mounted on a drilling rig so as to remove
the obstruction underground. This process could enable the hard rock and
pressed soil to become extractable out of the steel casing. In this project, the
obstructions were then extracted out by flushing the case with water and
compressed air. The compressed air acted at the initial force and the water acted
as a transferring medium to carry out the obstruction out of the earth. The above
two procedures will take turns to start until all of the obstruction inside the tube
were wholly carried out.
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Figure 8: Removing obstruction by drilling with down-the-hole hammer mounted
on drilling rig
Figure 9: Withdrawing soil from inside the casing by flushing with water and
compressed air
The H-Piles would then be installed inside the empty steel casing after the
clearance of obstruction inside. Meanwhile, a 20mm diameter grout tube was
also placed to full length of the pile in order to prepare its grouting process later
on.
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Figure 10: Installing steel H-pile inside the empty steel casing

The grouting process is to have a re-bonding between the soil and the H-piles
with the suitable grade of concrete by tremmie method from the bottom to the top
of the casing. Tremmie method is a concrete-pouring method in some dry spaces
underground deeply. Since a tube is used to pour the concrete from the bottom,
the force of falling concrete can be controlled through shortening the distance of
freely movement of the concrete. It can prevent the concrete from improperly
mixed when it is placed at the bottom of the casing which result in voids and air
packet which can cause possible danger to the whole structure.
The temporary steel casings were extracted gradually when the fresh concrete
was pouring inside since the bonding force of the concrete is not strong at this
moment. However, engineers maintained the bottom of the casing at a level of at
least 2 meters below the grout surface to ensure that there was enough time
range for the concrete to form the circular shape. The grouting operation was
stopped when the uncontaminated grout flowed out of the hole to ensure the
purity of concrete poured inside the casing.
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Figure 11: Grouting the steel casing with suitable grade of concrete by tremmie
method
Figure 12: Extracting the steel casing while grouting is going on
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Figure 13: Grouting the steel casing with suitable grade of concrete by tremmie
method
Figure 14: Extracting the steel casing while grouting is going on
The finishing of grouting process means that the whole development of PreBored Drill-in H-Pile system is come into the end soon. After the dewatering
process of the concrete attached to the H-Pile itself, the drilled-in H-Pile was
finished. Figure 13 shows the product of the above stages. It is a group of drilledin H-Piles that were formed a combined pile cap for the highway bridges in
Queen Mary Interchange. To verify its bear capacity, loading test was taken place
in order to test its vertical deflection. Once the test was passed, the
superstructure developments were then taken place.
Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling system is not only applied in local road constructions,
but it is also applied in some small-scale construction of buildings in Hong Kong.
There is a typical example, which is the construction of Sheung Wan Stormwater
Pumping Station (SWSPS) on Hong Kong Island. It is a single-storey building
with a underground water tank with 11 meters deep at the Chung Kong Road,
which is the waterfront of Sheung Wan. This project was to alleviate the flooding
problem in Sheung Wan.
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Figure 15: Sheung Wan Stormwater Pumping Station

Figure 16: Location Plan of Sheung Wan Stormwater Pumping Station
According to the paper presented by Leung,Li and Leung (2009), the site of the
Sheung Wan Stormwater Pumping station was reclaimed in 1982. The material
used for reclaimed it are as followed,
Fill (medium grained granite)
Marine Deposit
Alluvium
Completely Decomposed Granite (CDG)
Originally the engineers decided to build up this service station with 60 numbers
of large diameter bored piles, and the diameter of which are ranged from 1.2
meters to 1.5 meters.
Figure 17: The Original Bored Pile Layout Plan of SWSPS
Figure 18: The Geological Section Across the site (Land Seawall)
But later on, the contractor of this project advised the government to build up the
superstructure and sub-structure over a combination of rock socketted H-piles,
mini-piles and raft foundation. The government finally accepted the advice from
the contractor and starting the construction process. Referring back to the Figure
17, the PC5 Zone, all of the piling would be changed into the Pre-Bored H-piling
system. For the other zoning, mini-piles were used.
The major reason to change the piling system, as the paper disclosed, was
because of the cost effectiveness. First of all, since the diameter of the steel
casing used in Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling system is far smaller than the bored
piling system. The grouting process of the former one will consuming less amount
of concrete than the latter one, which can reduce the cost of development.

Table 2: The difference in pile foundation

between the initial and final plan
Besides the cost consideration factor, the time used for developing these two
different kinds of piling systems is different. As what Kumaraswamy, Mohan
(2002) said, the whole process of developing a Pre-bored H-piling system only
cost around 3 days. However, the development of a foundation pile normally
takes up more than 3 days. Since the amount of pile developed in this project is
large, i.e. nearly 50 piles are changed from bored pile to pre-bored H piling
system. The time cost saved through the final plan is considerable.
In the aspect of technical operation, the required pile capacity of the pumping
station is 6900 kN. For bored piling, For bored piling (The government of
HKSAR,2006), typical sizes of these piles range from 1 m to 3 m, with lengths up
to about 80 m and working loads up to about 45 000 kN. When high grade and
heavy steel H-pile section is used, the load-carrying capacity can exceed 5 500

kN. We can see that the loading capacity of bored piling is far more than the
loading requirement of the pumping station. However, we can also discover that a
maximum of 1400kN was not be able to supported by Rock Socketted Steel HPile. The solution, as shown in Figure 18, is to place in 4 numbers of T50 steel
bars inside each of the casing for reinforcement so as to remove the discrepancy.
Therefore, the final plan can enable a more efficient use in the resource than the
initial one. That is why it is reasonable for the government to change its decision.
Figure 19: Typical detail of Rock Socketted H-piles of Alternative Design
For the developing processes of the Pre-bored socketted H-piling system, most
of them are the same as the Pre-bored Drilled-in piling system. The major
difference between them is that the steel casing used in Pre-bored socketted Hpiling system is permanently fixed inside the soil, while the steel casing used in
Pre-bored Drilled-in piling system was temporary in used. They are removed
during grouting. In this project, the rock socket H-piles were installed through the
help of concentric overburden drilling system with air-flushing. It uses a rotarypercussive action for drilling and uses air flushing for removal of debris before
casting in the H-pile inside the tube and grouting.
In conclusion, the loading bearing capacity of Pre-Bored Steel H-Piling system is
relatively lower than the other common piling system used in Hong Kong.
However, due to its mobility during installation and its strength, it is still also
commonly applied in some small-scale development in local projects.

-The End-