BEHAVIOR OF BURIED CONCRETE PIPE

The principles of soil-structure interaction, facilitated by the advent of high speed digital computers and the finite element method, have been applied to develop a mathematical model that is used to analyze the behavior of concrete pipe buried in a soil mass. The material properties of both components (soil and pipe) and the construction sequence have been incorporated in the analysis in a reasonably realistic manner, and calculated results for eight different field installations (two at East Liberty, Ohio, and six at Mountainhouse Creek, Calif. ) are compared with measured field behavior. Primary emphasis is given to the stress distribution at the soil-pipe interface and the diameter changes that occur, because experimental information on these response parameters is available from all eight installations; however, some attention is given to the stresses and strains in the soil immediately adjacent to the pipes at the East Liberty installations.