I live in Alexandria, VA and the new Wilson bridge was opened in the last year. While looking for information on how pile drivers worked after seeing James Duncan Davidson post a picture of one in action, I stumbled upon a presentation and report by the makers of the hammer, Vulcan Hammer, used to drive the piles needed for the Wilson bridge. If I did the math right, over a one year period, it took on the order of 150 million blows to set the piles to support the bridge…. that is a lot of banging going on.
Thankfully I live a few miles from the bridge 