Introduction - Piling Engineering - page 4

East London Railway but here its use was again short-lived. After only three charges of
gunpowder had exploded, it caused such a state of alarm among the dock authorities
that they ordered its removal forthwith. The same, or a similar machine, was then
used to drive piles for the third bridge over the River Elbe at Dresden and was highly
praised for efficiency, economy and speed. Piles of 1.8m to 2.5m length were driven
at a rate of up to 30 per day using 60 gunpowder cartridges per pile. The cost per pile
for driving was reported as '8 shillings and 6 pence'.
In 1897, A.A. Raymond patented the Raymond pile system and was, it appears,
the first person to develop a practical economical cast-in-place concrete pile. In 1903,
R.J. Beale also developed a method of driving a steel pipe, plugged at its lower end,
and of subsequently filling it with concrete and then withdrawing the tube, while in
1908 E. Frankignoul, a Belgian, invented an early version of the Franki driven-tube
pile which was later developed to provide expanded bases and which became widely
known and successful throughout the world. At about the same time the first pre-cast
concrete driven piles appeared and although the originator is not known, the earliest
drawings of precast concrete piles in the United Kingdom appear to have come from
the Hennebique Company.
The use of steel I-beam piles originated in the United States before 1900, when
fabricated sections were used for highway bridges in Nebraska, but after 1908 the
Bethlehem Steel Co. produced rolled H-sections which quickly captured the market
for this type of pile.
The use of steam-operated hammers continued throughout the first half of this
century for driving piles of all types but declined in the post-war period after 1946,
and in-place diesel-operated hammers became popular. Drop hammers, operated from
diesel winches and crane drums, have nevertheless remained to the present time because
of the basic simplicity of the method. Now diesel hammers have lost some of their
former popularity for environmental reasons, and it would appear that hydraulically-
powered hammers are finding increased usage because of relative efficiency and easy
variable control.
Bored piles, formed by percussion boring tools, have certainly been known and used
in the United Kingdom since the early 1930s, but it would be wrong to think of bored
piling as a development of the twentieth century. Long before the term 'bored pile' was
coined, and before hydraulic cements came into common use, the 'well foundation'
was used in many countries for the support of major structures. Such foundations
have been dug in India for example for hundreds of years, with the stone foundation
being carried up from the base of each excavation or boring. The Taj Mahal, which
was built in the period 1632 to 1650, made extensive use of this type of foundation,
and throughout the Mogul period from 1526 this type of support was used for many
bridges across deep river beds where scour occurred.
The same technique proved particularly effective for railway bridges when the
railways were first introduced into India and was equally successful in England
where three railway bridges across the Thames in London at Charing Cross, Cannon
Street and Victoria Station were founded on well-type foundations in the mid-
nineteenth century, casting what were in effect large-diameter piles within hand-dug
caissons.
With the advent of hydraulic cements, however, it was no longer necessary to restrict
the dimensions of well foundations to those which would allow workers to descend