The present invention relates to a modular piling driver to drive a high capacity and maximum continuous length of underpinning pile (62) pile of at least equal to the clear floor height of a building. Further, the pile driver can also insert the pile at or below the foundation sub-structure in confined spaces to save material without having to cut-off extra length. In addition to this advantage, a series of light weight modular basic unit of the present invention can be manually connected together to form an assembly within the excavated foundation to drive piles.
However, it is also noted that the present invention can also be used in the open work spaces.
Basically, the existing injection pile driver uses a combination of two mechanisms; a vertical driving actuator that is used in conjunction with either a side gripping holder, top gripping holder or just simply pressing down on the pile's top surface.
In the prior arts such as WO93/01364 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,368,023B1, the pile driver employs one or more vertical hydraulic jacks mounted on frames with large dead weights of more than 50 to 1000 tons to be moved on tracks or slide on hydraulic footsteps. This kind of machines is disadvantageous and clearly cannot be moved to work in confined spaces like in a basement of a building.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,300,230B2 and EP2006070165, as the pile driver that does not use the side gripping mechanism, it will considerably reduce the ability to drive long piles. This driving mechanism will require a tall frame with a rigid horizontal member to support the jack to thrust the ram downwards on to the top of the pile. Using this method is obviously disadvantageous because the pile length will be limited to the clear distance taken from the tip of the hydraulic ram to the top of the existing driven pile in the ground, and moreover only short pile can be driven to avoid buckling.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,368,023B1, as a modification to increase the driven length of pile without the side gripping mechanism, it uses two drive heads with a frame structure in two driving stages but nevertheless the frame structure will take up some vertical space in a limited room head and is unable to drive a high capacity and maximum continuous length of underpinning pile (62) at least equal to the clear floor height of a building.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,433,556 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,204,283, a simply pressing down on the pile's top surface requires that the foundation has to be excavated and jacked against the base of the foundation to the top of the pile that is being driven; clearly this is cumbersome, difficult and can only drive many small pile lengths.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,798 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,345 has disadvantages in the loading method even though using a side gripping mechanism as it requires that the pile be slotted vertically from the top into an opening of a fixed horizontal thrust member which is located some height above the ground, therefore reducing the maximum possible pile length to be driven. Similarly, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,335 the twin pile gripping assembly is the obstructing member.
EP2006070165, U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,798 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,345 use pile gripping mechanism for driving small pile by means of employing wedges to jam the driving pile is difficult, slow and unable to prevent a total slippage. In another case, U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,335 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,411,408 employ slots in the pile to be used as gripping mechanism, but these slots will be difficult to fabricate in full section such as concrete square pile as it may initiate crack formations.
EP1806455A1 uses top hydraulic clamps in the pull and push method as commonly used in driving sheet piles in a row, however since these pile gripping mechanism is applied from the top of the piles it is therefore unable to drive maximum pile length.
The pile drivers mentioned in the above prior arts have drawbacks such as having either tall frame, heavy and bulky structure or inconvenient top loading of pile which is difficult to mobilise into a small confined space with limited head room and drive the pile at or below the foundation sub-structure. Therefore, the present invention has overcome these disadvantages.
To avoid using many small slender joints of piles, accordingly an object of this present invention is to drive a high capacity and maximum continuous length of underpinning pile (62) in a confined space with limited head room. The object of the present invention teaches that:
The pile driver is light and transportable to work manually in confined spaces and yet able to drive very high capacity piles.
The pile driver has no obstructing horizontal members thus allowing the pile to be displaced horizontally and vertically aligned into the clamping block which is moved to the ground level or even below the foundation sub-structure.
The pile driver can drive the pile below the foundation sub-structure.
The piling driver can drive the underpinning pile (62) truly vertical by levelling the C-shaped horizontal beam using the top and bottom bolts (32) within the threaded section (51) of the respective vertical holding frame members (5).
The pile driver can use the dead weight of the building and have the option to utilise the frictional resistance of the adjacent driven piles in a push and pull method when interconnected into an assembly.
According to the present invention, these objectives above are accomplished by the pile driver comprising of components:
A thrust block frame structure with a C-shaped horizontal member having a side opening with four through openings for the supporting a pair of vertical hydraulic jacks and the two vertical holding frame members;
A pair of upper and lower locking pins attached to the two vertical holding frame members such that will rest on the parallel beams (7) that will bear against the soffit of the foundations to resist the push and pull force from the thrust block frame structure;
A clamping block that slides along the smooth section of the two vertical holding frame members;
A clamping block provided with an orthogonal pair of horizontal hydraulic clamps with interchangeable clamp plates of complimentary contact mouldings to grip the tabular pile;
It should be appreciated that to maximise the potential of the present invention, the modular pile driver can be inter-connected into an assembly surrounding the foundation in order to use the push and pull method to utilize the adjacent frictional resistances of the driven piles as reactions to drive the pile with greater force than the building weight.
Further understanding of the aspects of the present invention and their advantages will be discerned after studying the detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
a shows the clamping block with top extended wing sections and a typical round pile with complimentary orthogonal pairs of clamps;
b shows the clamping block with top and bottom extended wing sections and a typical square pile with complimentary orthogonal pairs of clamps;
Referring to the drawings, like numerals indicate like components to facilitate explanation. In order to differentiate two separate entities belonging to like components, a suffix “a” or “b” is used to denote the first and second entity.
Components of the Pile Driver
The underpinning pile (61) can be a tabular and made of any kind of material such as steel, timber or concrete. The thrust block frame structure (3) consists of a C-shaped horizontal beam (34) with a side opening (31) made of steel that is heavily designed to resists twisting and accommodates a pair of vertical hydraulic jacks (4) and two vertical holding frame members (5).
The thrust block frame structure (3) connections is easily detachable by unscrewing the following; bolts (42) at the base of the C-shaped horizontal beam (34) that supports the pair of vertical hydraulic jacks (4), the top and bottom bolts (32) holding two vertical holding frame members (5) upright, and a detachable rotating socket joint (21) that holds the clamping block (2) to the end of the rams (44).
In the plan view, the centreline of the underpinning pile (61) is in line with the centres of the through holes (33, 35) so that there is no overall eccentricity except localised in the C-shaped horizontal beam (34).
a shows the clamping block (2a) with a top extended wing sections (22) at both ends. An orthogonal plan of horizontal clamps (25, 29) (not shown here) has corresponding rams that passes through the hole (28) to make contact at the centre (27a) of the clamp plates (26a). The clamps plates facing (28a) are moulded complimentary in shape to the round pile.
b shows the clamping block (2b) with a top and bottom extended wing sections (22) at both ends. The clamps plates facing (28b) are moulded complimentary in shape to the square pile.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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PI 20084705 | Nov 2008 | MY | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/MY2009/000163 | 10/1/2009 | WO | 00 | 5/25/2011 |