In this study, the effect of pipe-soil relative stiffness on the behaviour of buried flexible pipes was investigated considering the pipe size, material type, stiffness, pipe-soil and natural soil-backfill interfaces and geometry of the trench using the finite element method. For this purpose, a parametric study was conducted to examine the effect of different variables on the resulting earth loads and deformations imposed on the buried pipes. Various types of trench pipe-soil cases were analysed for a certain natural ground and backfill material by the PLAXIS finite element code which allows simulating non-linear soil behaviour, the stages of construction as well as the pipe-soil interaction aspects of the problem. Loads and deformations obtained by the finite element method were compared with those calculated by the conventional approaches for different pipe-soil stiffness ratios. The finite element results obtained for the deformation of typically flexible Polyethylene pipes were then used to back-calculate the range of modulus of soil reaction, E' / , values for various pipe-soil relative stiffness and they were compared with the suggested value proposed by Howard (1977).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12611562/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Creators | Bircan, Mehmet |
| Contributors | Ozkan, M. Yener |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
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