Retaining walls
Wide flange beams serve as stabilizing elements in earth-retaining walls, highway noise barriers, and walls within basements or underground structures.
Wide flange beams are useful in cofferdam applications as part of bracing and waler systems. They enable the transfer of anchor loads to the wall's supporting piles or facilitate uniform load distribution along a sheet pile wall. The piles bear against the wall and are secured to its main steel components by welding or anchoring.
In applications such as secant and tangent pile walls, wide flange beams are used to allow for the free flow of concrete and reduce the formation of voids. Secant and tangent pile walls are formed by constructing reinforced concrete piles, using either a wide flange steel beam or steel reinforcing bars. Secant walls feature an overlap between piles, typically in the range of three inches. Tangent pile walls do not overlap and are constructed so that the piles are contiguous. Both secant and tangent pile walls are used as retaining walls, foundation walls, or diaphragm walls.
To achieve more robust or rigid walls, contractors use wide flange beams as king piles, combining them with sheet piles. The Z-beam wall application employs connectors welded to the ends of the beam flanges to create a connecting element between the sheet piles and the king piles.
In soldier pile wall applications (or soldier pile and lagging walls), wide flange steel piles are placed at regular intervals during the construction process. These wide flange piles can be installed by drilling or by being pressed into the ground. Sound and visual barriers are non-load-bearing structures designed to create a buffer against noise and visual pollution between a roadway and a residential or commercial area.