Performance of large-diameter honeycomb-design HDPE pipe under a highway embankment

Abstract

This paper presents field performance data on a 1.07 m (42 in.) diameter, honeycomb (HC) design HDPE pipe which is buried under 15.85 m (52 ft) of fill at a highway construction site in Ohio. The pipe was instrumented with six biaxial strain gages to monitor strains during initial backfilling and earth-pressure cells for measuring load for about 1 year. A portable linear variable displacement transducer device was used to detect changes in vertical and horizontal diameters at mid-length sections. The pipe performance has been monitored for 386 days. The vertical and horizontal deflections of the test pipe stabilized at –10% and +3%, respectively. The pipe exhibited localized short-wave deformations and inner wall tearing at springline due to combined actions from bending and ring compression. Elastic solutions of Burns and Richard and a finite element computer code CANDE-89 were applied with long-term moduli specified for the pipe material to evaluate their analytical results in relation to the measured field pipe performance.Key words: field performance, plastic pipe, highway embankment, deep burial, finite element.