TABLE OF CONTENTS Shoring systems are not standardized within North America or even within a single state of the United States. They are customized installations with the variations depending on local experience, local conditions, availability and cost of materials and the amount of shoring which is performed in a given area. Contractors and engineers, in areas which have large amounts of shoring, tend to develop highly specialized solutions to the particular problems. In areas that have little or no shoring history, the shoring systems tend to be quite textbook in their design and installation.
This chapter will attempt to outline some of the more common techniques used for shoring. It is acknowledged that this chapter cannot possibly cover all the techniques and variations used in North America but will attempt to provide an understanding of shoring systems such that variations, when seen, will not be confusing.
The use of driven sheet piling dates back prior to the development of techniques which permitted the rolling of steel into sheets (see Figure 3.1). Steel sheet piling was patented in the U.S.A. in the 1890s and came into production in the early 1900s. Prior to the introduction of steel sheet piling, when a contractor had to install a shoring system which would retain not only soil pressures, but also water, he might nail three planks together in a staggered fashion (see Figure 3.2) to construct a type of tongue and groove timber sheet which could be driven to excluded running soils. This was...
