Mechanical Analyses of Underground Pipelines Subjected to Ground Subsidence Considering Soil-Arching Effect
Fuquan Chen, Si-Qian Fang, Luo‐bin Lin
Abstract
In this study, a new mechanical model is proposed to compute earth pressure above a pipeline considering pipe-soil interaction and three-dimensional soil arching effects of cohesive fills, based on the Terzaghi vertical sliding surface theory. In this model, the pipeline was mechanically separated into buried and suspended segments, whose stress distribution and deformation were solved according to the boundary conditions and geometric conditions. Comparisons to both the test data and corresponding finite element codes concretely verify the proposed mechanical model. Then a parametric investigation indicated that the mechanical behavior of the pipe is greatly affected by the size of a subsidence area and the flexural rigidity of the pipe.