Innovation Description and Benefit:

Yellow Jacket is a prefabricated pile sleeve utilized to reduce the negative skin friction on piles embedded behind MSE bridge abutments. The Yellow Jacket provides a slip plane between the settling abutment select backfill and the driven bridge abutment piles, resulting in a significant reduction of the downdrag imposed on the piles. This product is used in lieu of sand filled corrugated metal pipe pile spacers.  The ease of installation and less construction activities required to install Yellow Jacket lead to overall time savings on the project.