The behavior of underground conduits buried in soil

Abstract

Many industries use pipelines for transporting various materials, including water, gas, oil, and sewage. A thorough study of the behavior of pipes and soil is essential in the design of buried pipes. The study goal is to forecast the performance of buried HDPE and fiberglass pipes at different thicknesses of sand backfill. A tank-shaped laboratory model of a trench and top static stress is built. PLAXIS-2D finite element software was employed to validate the experimental test values. A parametric study is performed to investigate the potential impacts of the ground loads, the loading area length, the pipeline's buried depth, and the pipeline's type and wall thickness on the model response. From the results, it can be concluded that pipes buried at shallower depths are subjected to significantly greater stresses and damage ratio. The physical and numerical modeling results agree with each other. It is also observed that if the parameters are well selected for physical and numerical analysis, it can be an easy and less time-consuming method for finding out strength and deformation behavior for analyzing and designing the buried pipes. Generally, the pipes with greater wall thickness and depth are safer within a reasonable range. Therefore, it can be concluded that this methodology can be used for the safe and economical design of buried pipes subjected to static loading conditions.