Development of a prototype for modelling soil–pipe interaction and its application for predicting uplift resistance to buried pipe movements in sand

Abstract

This paper presents a testing rig for measuring the reactions on rigid pipes buried in sand during episodes of relative displacement. Following a detailed presentation of the 1g prototype, the test preparation procedure, and the characterization of the test sand’s shear strength and dilation potential under the low confining stresses pertinent to the problem, the paper focuses on the workflow devised to obtain accurate measurements of friction and arching effects, and accordingly normalize them to account for scale (stress level) effects. Emphasis is put on demonstrating the effectiveness of the sand deposition method for accurately controlling the density of the sample, and on quantitatively assessing its uniformity. Measurements obtained during a series of uplift tests, including reaction force – pipe displacement curves and images of the developing failure surface, facilitated by particle image velocimetry and close-range photogrammetry techniques, are compared against published data and analytical methods. The results lead to the development of a new simplified formula for calculating the uplift resistance to buried pipe movements in sand: capable of accounting for scale effects, yet simple enough to be used for the analysis of pipes in practice.