Static and dynamic responses of buried steel pipe under truck load: An experimental study

Abstract

The behavior of a buried pipe under static and dynamic loading conditions has been investigated through full-scale field tests. A plain steel pipe with a diameter of 762 mm was gauged at the outer surface of two pipe sections. A dump truck was employed for the static and dynamic loading tests. Under static loading, the measured pipe strains increase with increasing axle load and decreasing cover depth. The measured strains under dynamic loading show three peaks, which correspond to the times at which the front, middle, and rear axles, respectively, reach the pipe centerline. The offset loading pattern produces greater strains than the non-offset one while keeping the axle load constant under both static and dynamic loads. It is discovered that the pipe strains caused by each truck axle vary with truck speed. Since the load transfer is influenced by a number of factors, including the truck load, road roughness, truck speed, and others, a moving truck load does not always result in higher pipe strains as compared to a static load. The complexity of dynamic pipe responses can be explained in part by a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) model.