Full-Scale Burial Testing of Pipes and Storm Chambers

A complex soil-structure interaction is involved when buried flexible plastic pipe or storm chamber systems are placed under load, and the stability of these buried systems must be demonstrated under “worst-case” live and/or dead load conditions. While it has become common place to demonstrate buried structure stability through analytical methods, including empirical equations or finite element modeling, full-scale burial tests have been recognized as necessary to, at least, calibrate these analytical methods. Two types of field tests have been used for this purpose: conventional excavation/backfill construction and compact burial chambers. This paper describes these full-scale burial testing facilities and procedures and how they have been used to develop deflection and strain data, along with a visual record, for use in correlating results of small-scale laboratory tests and calibrating design models. Included is an example of each type of field test – one evaluating storm chambers and another looking at corrugated pipe.