Lateral force–displacement prediction for buried pipe under different effective stress condition

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to elucidate the soil–pipe interaction in saturated sand with different effective stress. A force–displacement curve that took into account the variation of the effective stress was formulated based on the results of lateral loading experiments on a model pipe. To reproduce liquefaction experimentally, the effective stress of the soil bed was controlled by the upward seepage induced by a hydraulic gradient. The model pipe was pulled laterally under either displacement or load control. The experimental results indicate that the normalised force–displacement relationships can be well approximated by hyperbolic curves under each hydraulic gradient. When the variation in effective stress is reflected in the submerged unit weight of the soil, the two coefficients of the hyperbolic curves also show a hyperbolic dependence on the unit weight, and the ultimate resistive force increases in proportion to the unit weight. The predicted force–displacement curve fits relatively well to the experimental results.