What are the advantages of Combi-walls?

Combi-wall plays an important role in civil engineering, It is widely applied in construction of Harbor, airport, railway, marine reclamation land and skyscraper. In this passage, we are going to talk about the following parts:

What is the Combi-wall?

The advantages of Combi-wall

What is the Combi-wall?

A Combi-wall is an earth-retaining wall that, as the name suggests, is composed of different types of profiles. Combi walls are put together through interlocking clutches or by installing sheet piles in between the steel piles.

In combi wall, piles acts as the load bearing structure, while sheet piles installed in between make the wall continuous.

There are two main types of Combi-walls, HZ Combi-walls and OZ Combi-walls. HZ type is a combination of H-shaped steel sheet pile and Z-shaped steel sheet pile. Combination sheet pile walls are typically formed by joining a pair of sheet pile sections with regularly spaced king pile patterns and are typically used when regular sheet piles are not strong enough to carry the required loads.

The other one is OZ Combi-wall which is a combination of large-diameter steel pipe piles and sheet piles installed to form a retaining wall structure. The pipe pile portion of a Combi-wall is typically installed as a bored pile which may or may not be back filled with concrete and reinforcing steel, depending on the application. Sheet piles are installed in the spaces between the pipes with a vibratory hammer and are aligned with pipes using welded interlocking points. Other pile cross-sections such as H-piles can also be combined with sheet piles to form a Combi-wall.

The advantages of Combi-wall

First, the main advantage of this wall is the great stiffness of the whole, which also increases its bearing strength.  The Combi-wall is stabilized by installing horizontal struts or anchors (e.g. MV-piles or ground anchors) in the soil behind it.

Second, Combi-walls provide a cost-effective shoring alternative to the secant wall while providing significantly more load bearing capacity than a sheet pile wall.

Besides, Combi-walls are effective in temporary applications as the steel elements can be easily removed and re-used once the structure is no longer needed.

Furthermore, for other category of Combi-wall, it has advantages like following:

the Spiral Steel Pipes advantages

• Long length without joints

• Economical compared to LSAW and Seamless Pipes

• Large range of sizes available

• Access to high grade coils

• Provision of corrosion protection before delivery

The King pile wall advantages

• Increased wall stiffness

• Increased wall moment resistance

• Sheet piles can be terminated at higher elevations

• King piles can extend deeper to better bearing strata

• Might offer a better alternative to other systems

• Ideal for heavy marine applications

• King pile wall disadvantages

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