CONCRETE IN THE GROUND

Reinforced concrete piles –

the inside story
terrain. This rapid growth of capital industries triggered
Developments in pile foundations have important changes to mechanical pile driving systems,
come a long way since the days of universal resulting in the invention of steam-driven and,
dependence on timber or metal pile ultimately, diesel-engine power for machines.
structures alone. The revolution came with
the introduction of reinforced concrete Exploiting areas with poor soil
techniques. Glyn Dawson of Whitelegg In modern times, high demand for land available for
commercial and domestic construction has often led
Machines charts the move towards today’s
local authorities and development agencies to exploit
off-site reinforcing bar prefabrication areas with poor soil characteristics. This limitation
systems. has resulted in the development and refinement of pile
techniques and pile driving systems.
There are specific advantages of reinforced concrete
ile foundations have been used as load-carrying piles that are bored and cast in-situ. They can be

P and load-transferring systems throughout history.

In times past, when villages and towns were sited
strategically close to rivers and lakes to meet defensive
installed with the minimum of noise and little or no
vibration to disturb the subsoil and other neighbouring
structures. Very long lengths and large diameters are
or logistical needs, it was essential to strengthen the achievable and these dimensions can be varied to suit
bearing ground of any construction with some form of specific ground conditions. For increased stability
piling. in clays, pile end enlargements of up to two or three
From the Roman era to the early 18th Century, diameters are possible. An added advantage is that site
timber piles were virtually the only option, driven condition information can be gathered from in-situ
in to the ground by hand or positioned in dug holes, inspection and testing of the bored-out soil. Finally,
which were then filled with sand and stones. The first the choice of actual pile material used is not dependent
breakthrough in technique came in 1740, when Swedish upon its handling characteristics or its resistance to pile
engineer Christoffoer Polhem invented mechanical pile driving stresses.
driving equipment not dissimilar to that in use today.
This innovation spurred on the use of more permanent Reinforcing bars
piling materials, with cast iron being introduced around As concrete is very strong in compression but relatively
1800 and concrete piles from the beginning of the 20th weak in tension, embedded steel reinforcing bars provide
century. tensile strength and compensate for this imbalance.
The industrial revolution created the need for larger While steel reinforcement is obtainable in a variety
load-bearing structures to house heavy manufacturing of forms of bars and fabric, circular-section rolled bars
and processing plant, often in difficult and varied or rods are mostly commonly used for all forms of
Lemon Groundworks
setting the first tack weld.

50 concrete
 CONCRETE IN THE GROUND

strength to a maximum. Greatest advantage is obtained

when a large number of small-diameter bars are used
rather than a few larger bars because the surface area in
contact with the concrete is thereby increased.

Pile cage assembly

The common method of introducing steel reinforcement
for in-situ bored pile casting is in the form of pile cages
comprising a tubular or profiled assembly of reinforcing
bar lengths connected by rings or wire fixings.
With the exception of short-run specialist
applications, the manual assembly of pile cages on site
GAM machine from MEP. reinforced work. High-tensile rods are also employed for bored pile, cast-in-situ reinforced concrete piles
and because of the higher working stress, less steel is is a labour-intensive operation involving steel fixers
required to provide the same strength as mild steel. constructing the reinforcing bar cages with rings and by
However, in developing its higher strength it stretches wire tacking or hand welding.
more than mild steel and any resultant cracks in the The economic alternative is off-site prefabrication
concrete around it will be larger. The better the bond the methods, which offer the opportunity to carry out fast,
less risk there is of large concentrated cracks developing accurate pile cage assembly, producing automatically
and as a means of increasing bond and limiting cracking welded cages from 150mm outside diameter up to
to fine well-distributed cracks, deformed bars provide 2000mm o/d and up to as much as 21m long. Such
the answer. mechanised methods free-up site operatives for other
Deformed bars are produced in a number of ways. specialised duties and at the same time reduce the
First, as high-tensile steel bars rolled with projecting casting process time by requiring fewer splicing and
ribs or corrugations along the length, or second, coupling operations for pile cage connection.
from mild steel bars that are cold-worked to increase
the ultimate tensile strength and raise or eliminate Leading innovator
the yield-point of the steel, the amount of increase One of the innovators of automatic assembly techniques
depending upon the nature of the basic steel and the is an Italian company, MEP – Macchine Elettroniche
amount of cold-working. Both stretching and twisting Piegatrici – based in Undine, Italy, which specialises in
are used as methods of cold-working and may be applied all aspects of cold steel reinforcement bar processing.
to circular ribbed bars or to square bars, which become The company has developed the compact GAM
deformed by the twisting process and thus afford better assembly system, the configuration of which is unique
bond. in that the spiral welding head moves along the
The greater bond stress obtainable makes it possible longitudinal bars. In other systems, machines ‘push’ the
to stress the steel to higher limits and thus develop its cage through the welding head, so requiring a 15m cage
to have a 30m operational length during its assembly.
GAM system in use.
The forming operation commences with the chosen
number of longitudinal, cage-forming reinforcement
rods being loaded and secured into the end indexing
plate. The spiral forming coil is fed from an adjacent
pay-off coil into the automatic robot weld head, which
after the first few manual tacks can be left to rotate and
weld automatically via a dedicated programmable logic
controller (PLC) unit.

Pitch can be set automatically

The main mobile head moves along the guide rails,
carrying the welding unit and the spiral forming
mechanism. The spiral pitch can be set automatically
and is controlled by the rotation speed of the
longitudinal bars. Welding time is adjustable to suit the
bar and weld wire diameter and speed of rotation with
automatic control giving even, consistent welds.
To add to the speed of changeover, the patented
tooling can be quickly set for any cage diameter. The
PLC automatically calculates the position for the
holding bushes, enabling the operator to be sure that the
tooling set up is in the correct position first time.
One UK steel reinforcement specialist company now
using the GAM system is Wickford-based supply and
fix expert, Lemon Groundworks. The GAM machine
from MEP was supplied through UK agent, Whitelegg
Machines, which has a long association with Lemon
Groundworks that runs three MEP link benders at two
sites in Wickford and Rugby.
It all goes to confirm that pile technology has come
a long way from the timber methods of old and the
original concepts and procedures of the early days of
concrete reinforcement development. ●

52 concrete MAY 2011 www.concrete.org.uk