Sheet pile wall

Piling walls- are usually used in soft soils and tight spaces. A sheet pile wall is made out of steel, vinyl or wood planks which are driven into the ground. For a quick estimate the material is usually driven 1/3 above ground, 2/3 below ground, but this may be altered depending on the environment. A taller sheet pile wall will need a tie-back anchor, or "dead-man" placed in the soil a distance behind the face of the wall, that is tied to the wall, usually by a cable or a rod. Anchors are placed behind the potential failure plane in the soil.


           There are a lot of softwares that can usually asses the type of sheet pile wall you need to use in order to design a good retaining wall,we recommend the following:

• Prosheet- a free comprehensive  software  for Cantilever and Anchored Sheet Wall Systems according to the Blum theory. The ProSheet 2.2 defines all the forces required for determing a sheet piling structure.

The results produced by this method have to be checked carefully by the user in order to make sure that modelization of the soil-structure interaction is accurate enough (e.g. arching effects leading to higher anchor forces and lower bending moments in the wall).

   For the design of the head wall three static systems are possible:

- cantilever
- free earth support with one layer of anchor or struts
- fixed earth support with one layer of anchor or struts.

The anchor wall may be free-earth or fixed-earth supported.

The following loads are taken into consideration for the head wall as well as for the anchor wall:

- earth pressure behind the wall

- earth pressure in front of the wall

- water pressure behind the wall

- water pressure in front of the wall

- uniform infinite surcharges on the soil surface (Caquot) 

- concentrated linear surcharges (max 5) at any location (Boussinesq)

- point forces at any location of the wall (Concentrated Forces)

- a pressure diagram on the back of the wall.

The program defines the design characteristics based on the input data given by the user and the results are printed out in graphical as well as tabular form.

The design can be made in either metric or imperial units-you can download the sofware by clicking here .

• SLOPE/W-from GEO-SLOPE a comprehensive program that you can download for free only a trial version and you can view a sheet pile wall design example by clicking -here