Brief Introduction Percussive steel H-piles are installed to the required depth by driving the steel H-pile with hydraulic hammer or drop hammer. Percussive steel H-piles in Hong Kong are mainly designed as ‘friction piles’, where the pile tip is not found on rock, but on dense soil. This reduces the length of the pile to be installed, and hence reduces the risk of pile installation. As percussive steel H-pile is a type of ‘friction pile’, the load bearing capacity relies on the friction between the contacted surface area of the pile and soil.