Numerical modeling of buried drainage pipes by using finite element method

Abstract

With the increased use of pipelines for transporting water, gas, petroleum, and sewage, the importance of pipe is understood easily in life. As time goes on, pipe technology has been developing and present more facilities to humanity. It is a natural outgrowth of many years of study, testing and research in general areas of buried pipe performance. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate soil-pipe interaction and present the optimum alternatives of buried pipes subjected to the same loading conditions in various soil conditions by using finite element program. Also, this thesis aims to evaluate the soil pipe interaction problem by comparing experimental and numerical solutions. In this study, various kinds and various sizes of buried drainage pipes were modeled in two different conditions. The behavior of a buried non-pressure High Density Polyethylene (HDPE), Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) pipe and Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) pipe, with diameters of 300mm, 900mm, 1500mm, were analyzed through the PLAXIS finite element program. Regarding to these analyses, comparisons were performed between soil types and pipe types in order to evaluate soil-pipe behavior. In order to check the results of PLAXIS software, this study was compared with reference study. Modeling results were compared with the experimental study and CANDE program. As a result of finite element analysis, less displacement has been observed in trenches filled noncohesive soil and the optimum trench condition has been observed for fiber reinforced (FRP) pipes in non-cohesive soil.