To: HAWG Group

From: Con OConnor

Hamilton Construction
RE: Typical Processes of selecting pile hammers, analyzing the material, determining
blow counts, etc
All,
At last weeks meeting, I touched on the process that contractors use to determine the size
of pile hammers & what the anticipated blow count will be. There are so many different
situations in pile driving, I wouldnt dare try to condense them into a simple This is how
you do it scenario. The facets of Pile Driving are large. Ie Sheet pile, Pay Pile,
Temp Pile, Off-Shore driving, Vibratory Pile extraction, Vibratory Pile installation, Grout
Driven Piling, etc
However, in an effort to provide an example, I thought Id try a simple scenario to give
some insight into what we do.
For this example, I chose to take a look at our upcoming job on the Willamette River
Bridge. For this project, a temporary work bridge is required for the construction and it
requires a lot of temporary piling.
With that said, may as well jump into it
1. Right off the bat, once the job is out for bid or in some circumstances, after its
awarded, well contact an outside engineering firm. Well explain all the uses for
the temporary structures and what equipment well be using. From that work, the
loading requirements for the structure will be unveiled and the engineers work in
sizing the pile falls out. In determining the piling to be used, contractors will
want to fall back to what they have in their fleet or what is available on the
market. 16- 24 can pile and 12 14 wide flange beams being, in my opinion,
what you would expect to see prevalent in Oregon for inland stream crossings.
2. Attached is exhibit 1 that shows the design criteria for the work bridge at the
Willamette River Bridge. For this job, we are planning some large picks and
using our 3900 S2 Crane that weighs in at 368,000 lbs. For planning, weve
decided to have the bridge hold that crane plus a 100,000 lb load on the hook.
This is the criteria that our engineer used to design the workbridge. The plan
shows that for this job:
24 can piles shall be driven to a working capacity of 180 tons with a factor
of safety of 2:1 based on the Gates Formula
This will be the loading requirement for the bridge that we use to size the pile
hammer.
3. From that, we get the KIP (Thousand Pound) Requirement for reading the Gates
Formula:

 180 tons x 2 (FOS) x 2KIPs/Ton = 720 KIP piling

3. Then its just as simple as sizing the hammer to the load. Exhibit 2 shows the
Gates Equations that are ran on some of the pile hammers that Hamilton owns.
They are shown in excel format. Logic is as follows:
Contractors want the smallest hammer that can feasibly handle the load.
Mainly due to the fact that the smaller the hammer, the smaller the weight
that the crane needs to hold, and potentially, a smaller crane could be
employed (Exhibit 3 for hammer details)
Moving quickly through the hammer sheets
i. Vulcan #01 Air Hammer The highest capacity it reaches is 326
KIPs TOO SMALL
ii. Vulcan #06 Air Hammer The highest capacity it reaches is 386
KIPs TOO SMALL
iii. Delmag 19-32 Canola Oil Hammer the highest capacity it
reaches is 620 KIPS TOO SMALL
iv. Delmag 19-42 (D19) Canola Oil Hammer It doesnt reach 720
KIPs either TOO SMALL
v. Delmag 25-32 (D25) Canola Oil Hammer It reaches 740 KIPs
under perfect conditions. Those being 15 blows per inch with a
maximum stroke of 10.5 on fuel setting number 4.
vi. Delmag 36-28 (D36) Canola Oil Hammer It has a wide range of
conditions that will allow it to achieve 720 KIPs. Ive outlined
them in the exhibit.
4. A little background:
Smaller hammers, such as the D12 & -The D19, were the consistently
used hammers in our company for many years. As such, we own several
of them. The D25 is a little bigger. I would say that here in the past
couple of years, we have been using this hammer more frequently on work
bridge construction due mainly to the increasing loads that we are
requiring on the temporary bridges. The D36 is larger yet & has been used
to build work bridges. However, it limits us in our span length of work
bridges due to its weight when in use. All three sizes of hammers fits our
typical leads and can be used in many types of configurations. We do
own larger hammers (up to a D50-42), but due to their size and weight,
theyre not conducive to work bridge construction. They are delegated
mainly to railroad work and for the specific pile driving jobs wherein the
permanent pile are large. It should be noted that all the hammers Ive
discussed here are in a level far below what is/was used on projects like
the Benicia-Martinez Bridge in the San Francisco bay. There, they used a
1700 KJ hammer capable of producing a maximum energy of 1,700
Kilojoules of force (1,253,855 ft-lbs). Our biggest hammer we own, the
D50-42 is only capable of producing 144,243 ft-lbs. I dont know how
this correlates with hydro-acoustic noise, but I have to believe that there is
a connection.
5. Back to picking out the hammer Now we now that the D25 can get close to the
capacity required. The D-36 can drive to bearing with ease. In this situation (the

Willamette river in Eugene, OR), we would take a hard look at this scenario.
Where we have bedrock with very little in the way of overburden to drive thru, I
would say that we would do a trial run. Wherein, wed drive a pile with the D25
to bearing. Then wed put the D36 hammer on the pile to prove to ourselves that
the D25 could do the job at hand. This is what we did at the McKenzie. We
found that while the Gates Equations states that the D25 wont be able to drive a
pile to the 720 KIP bearing by blow count, it would however, drive the pile to the
bedrock layer. Wherein, blow count testing wasnt needed to assure ourselves
that we were indeed on bedrock. Getting the pile to some level of fixity on the
bedrock is our goal. For this example, this is somewhat easy. In areas like
Portland, wherein you are driving pile anywhere from 60-160 long piling to get
to the Troutdale Formation, it becomes a lot more complex. A more regimented
look at the geology of the overburden is required.
6. So to summarize, we are comfortable in our planning to drive the 24 can pile in
the workbridge with our D25-32 hammer to such a level as to achieve 12-15
blows per inch with a 10 stroke.
7. Our past experience on this particular site has shown that we can anticipate
driving the pile (on average) 4to 5 deep. The first 1 will go somewhat fast with
the remaining 3-4 driving slow. Using the Gates equation it would look
something like this:
Top 1 of driving (4 blows per inch) =
48 blows
Middle 2 of driving (6 blows per inch) =
144 blows
Btm 1 of driving (10 blows per inch avg) =
120 blows
Total =
312 blows/pile
8. Total Time to drive each pile.
During driving operations, the pilebucks will frequently shut the hammer
and give the operator a quick direction to ensure that the piles are plumb.
For discussion purposes say they stop 3 or 4 times on each pile for an
average of 2 minutes.
So
i. D25-42 operates at an average of 44 bpm
ii. 312 blows/pile / 44 bpm=
7 min. of drvg
iii. Operating changes delay =
8 min (non-driving)
Total

15 minutes per pile

In summary, I was hoping not to confuse everyone, but rather to show the process that is
common to most contractors on sizing hammers, sizing the pile, anticipating production
rates, loading requirements, etc for temporary work bridge style piling.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Con OConnor
541-913-0725