Pile driver
heavy equipment
A pile driver is a heavy-duty tool used to drive piles into soil to build piers, bridges, cofferdams, and other "pole" supported structures, and patterns of pilings as part of permanent deep foundations for buildings or other structures. Pilings may be made of wood, solid steel, or tubular steel (often later filled with concrete), and may be driven entirely underwater/underground, or remain partially aboveground as elements of a finished structure.
The term "pile driver" is also used to describe members of the construction crew associated with the task, also colloquially known as "pile bucks".
The most common form of pile driver uses a heavy weight situated between vertical guides placed above a pile. The weight is raised by some motive power (which may include hydraulics, steam, diesel, electrical motor, or manual labor). At its apex the weight is released, impacting the pile and driving it into the ground.
History
There are a number of claims to the invention of the pile driver. A mechanically sound drawing of a pile driver appeared as early as 1475 in Francesco di Giorgio Martini's treatise Trattato di Architectura. Also, several other prominent inventors—James Nasmyth (son of Alexander Nasmyth), who invented a steam-powered pile driver in 1845, watchmaker James Valoué, Count Giovan Battista Gazzola, and Leonardo da Vinci—have all been credited with inventing the device. However, there is evidence that a comparable device was used in the construction of Crannogs at Oakbank and Loch Tay in Scotland as early as 5000 years ago.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pile driver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.