HZ^®-M King piles

The HZ^®-M king piles are stiff wide flange beams, with a width of 420 mm or 460 mm, a height up to 1 100 mm, and flange thicknesses up to 40 mm, used in the HZ‑M/AZ combined wall system.

The key feature of this special sheet pile is the milled groove at the edge of the flanges that allows threading specific hot rolled connectors on it. The development of this range was made specifically to match the higer requirements of the deep sea quay wall for JadeWeserPort in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, back in 2008. The HZ‑M has been patented by ArcelorMittal.

Structurally, the HZ^®-M king piles fulfill 2 different functions

• as retaining members, the king piles resist horizontal loads resulting from earth and water pressures,
• as bearing piles, the king piles transfer high vertical loads from the superstructure, i.e. crane rails, building foundations, etc, to the ground.

The intermediate AZ^® sheet piles have a closing function, retaining earth and water, but they transfer most of the loads to the king piles. Infill sheet piles shall be exclusively a pair of light AZ sections because they have sufficient flexibility to adapt to the driving tolerances of a combined wall system.

The HZ‑M and their connectors are available in high strength steel grades according to EN 10248, ASTM A572 and ASTM A690.

Update February 2019 and January 2020: we modified slightly the radius r between the flange and the web of the profiles HZ 1080MA and above. It is now 30 mm instead of 35 mm. We updated all the values on our website, in the latest version of the HZ‑M brochure (2020), as well as the AutoCad files. This change has no noticeable impact on the resistance of the profiles, but might have one on the shape of the special T-connectors for tie-rods.

Update October 2019: the new HZ 630M profile completes the existing range of the already large HZ-M series. It was developed mainly for very hard driving conditions (installation in compact soils) and for structures with restrictions on the height of the system. It replaces the HZ 680M LT.