Numerical Study of Longitudinal Bending in Buried GFRP Pipes Subjected to Lateral Earth Movements

Buried energy pipelines span for hundreds of thousands of kilometres, crossing zones of soil instability and may need to be designed to resist differential ground movements. As a part of a comprehensive experimental and numerical study to examine the flexural performance of steel and fibreglass pressure pipes when loaded by lateral earth movements, this paper presents the numerical work simulating glass-fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) pipes that are 102 mm (4 in.) in nominal diameter and 1,830 mm (6 ft) long, subjected to lateral soil loading. The study investigated the effect of pipe laminate structure for crossply (+85/−6), and angle-ply (+55/−56) laminates on soil resistance capacity, and the net pipe deflections at different burial depth-to-diameter (H/D) ratios of 3, 5, and 7. The development and verification of three-dimensional finite-element model against experimental data and a comparison against numerical data for steel control pipes of comparable dimensions and pressure rating is also presented and discussed. It was shown that the numerical model for the GFRP pipes can successfully capture the soil resistance capacity and pipe behavior in terms of load displacement and net bending deflection. Also, effect of material variation and fiber orientation were in agreement with observed behavior of test data.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)PS.1949-1204.0000237
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/19491190
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Authors:
  • Almahakeri, Mohamed
  • Moore, Ian D
  • Fam, Amir
• Publication Date: 2017-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 04016012
• Serial:
  • Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice
  • Volume: 8
  • Issue Number: 1
  • Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers
  • ISSN: 1949-1190
  • EISSN: 1949-1204
  • Serial URL: http://ascelibrary.org/journal/jpsea2

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bending; Composite materials; Fiber reinforced polymers; Glass fibers; Numerical analysis; Pipe; Seismicity; Soil structure interaction
• Uncontrolled Terms: Underground pipelines
• Subject Areas: Design; Geotechnology; Materials; Pipelines;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01605305
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, ASCE
• Created Date: Jul 27 2016 9:49AM