Numerical Modeling on the Performance of Shallowly Buried Concrete Pipes under Heavy Crane Load

Concrete pipes are widely used as water retention/detention facilities in civil engineering projects, which are typically buried in a shallow depth (i.e., 0.6 m). Concrete pipes are typically installed at the early stage of projects to ensure the drainage capacity of the construction site, and the heavy construction vehicles may cause damage to the pipes. However, most of existing methods for calculating additional pressure on the pipe caused by live load could not consider the soil arching effect in the soil cover, which may result in underestimation of the pressure at pipe top. Numerical modeling was adopted in this study to investigate the performance of concrete pipes under a heavy crane load including pipe deflection, pressure at pipe top, and maximum bending moment. A parametric study was also conducted to evaluate the effects of pipe diameter, soil cover thickness, and magnitude of external load on the performance of concrete pipes.