Abstract
In the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructures to adapt to the rapidly changing natural and social environment, the complexity of the dependencies and interdependencies within critical infrastructure systems need to be fully understood, as they affect various components of risk and lead to cascading failures. Water and road infrastructures are highly co-located but often managed and maintained separately. One important aspect of their interdependence is the impact of vehicle loading on a road on underlying water pipes. The existing studies lack a comprehensive evaluation of this subject and do not consider possible critical failure scenarios. This study constructed finite element models to analyze the responses of buried water pipes to vehicle loads under an array of scenarios, including various loads, pipe materials, pipe dimensions, and possible extreme conditions, such as corrosion in pipes and a sinkhole under the pipe. The results showed negligible impact of heavy trucks on buried water pipes. The pipe deflection under a maximum allowable truck load in the worst condition was still within the allowable range specified in standards such as those from the American Water Works Association. This implies that the impact of heavy vehicles on water pipes may not need to be considered in the context of the interdependency between water and road infrastructures, which leads to a more unidirectional dependency between these two infrastructures.
Highlights
Since the objective of this study is to understand the impact of heavy vehicle movement on buried pipes, especially when critical conditions arise, the maximum allowable limit of gross truck weight was selected as the total truck load, without being unrealistic in the assumption of critically heavy loads
The main objective of this study was to uncover if heavy vehicles would affect the underlying water pipes of state-of-practice designs, so as to provide a better understanding of the interdependency between water and road infrastructure systems
Hydraulic loading on the pipe was not considered, since the focus was on understanding the effect of heavy vehicle loads
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The impact of roads on the structural performance of water pipes has been less noticed and reported. Understanding this type of impact may help us determine whether the structural interdependency between water pipes and roads is unidirectional or bidirectional. For pipes located under roadways, replacing or repairing damaged or failed sections is difficult and disruptive to the ground traffic It is, very important that water pipes are mechanically sound throughout their service life. Very important that water pipes are mechanically sound throughout their service life In this regard, the impact of traffic load on buried pipes needs to be clearly understood
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