Mini Piling
The process of mini piling consists of the pile being driven by an internal drop hammer. A wooden pile tip is fitted to a steel casing which contains a long concrete plug. The casing can be rather tenuous as there will only be tension forces that occur when driving the mini pile. The pile is driven to a specified depth at which point the steel casing is filled with concrete and then is installed with reinforcement. When this has been completed the casing is then extracted from the ground.
There are different ways of driving mini piles into the ground. One such way is using an explosive pile. The explosive charge is put into the casing at the bottom once it has reached the required depth. As the casing is removed the charge is detonated, increasing the size of the pile base. The benefit of this is that the bearing capacity is increased when the soil becomes greatly compacted by the force of the explosion. However, this is not always an ideal technique to use as soil compression and displacement is not always easy to predict.