A New Small-Scale Test Apparatus for Modeling Buried Pipes under Axial or Lateral Soil Loading

Abstract

Abstract This article describes a new small-scale test apparatus (2.10 m long, 0.50 m wide, and 0.50 m high) to study the behavior of small-diameter buried pipes subjected to both axial and lateral soil loading. The developed equipment innovates by not requiring a pullout system or additional objects inside the soil to apply the soil load on the pipe. Instead, soil loading is achieved by a simple mechanism of tilting the test box using an inexpensive manually controlled uplift system. The proposed apparatus aims to investigate the influence of different surcharge loads, soil cover ratios, soil densities, and pipe diameters. Besides, a camera support bolted to the apparatus structure enables image acquisition during testing with negligible relative movement between the digital camera and the apparatus. The applicability of this new facility is demonstrated through two model tests carried out to study the influence of soil density in soil/pipe response for a pipe subjected to lateral soil loading and with a soil cover ratio of 3.55. Results are presented in terms of pipe strains and soil displacements, which were measured using the digital image correlation technique.