Long-Term Soil Settlement of 36″ Requires Innovative Design and Construction of Critical 96″ and 84″ Steel Water Pipeline in Houston, Texas
Publication: Pipelines 2023
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the unusual structural demands encountered and innovative solutions provided for a critical large-diameter steel water transmission main in Houston, Texas. The 96″ and 84″ Project Segment B1 is part of the $1.2B Surface Water Supply Project (SWSP) for West Harris County Regional Water Authority (WHCRWA). The SWSP will utilize over 55 mi of large-diameter steel water transmission pipelines to convey potable water from the city of Houston’s Northeast Purification Plant to communities in West Harris County. Significant ground subsidence caused in part by pumping of water from aquifers and areas of naturally occurring slip-fault ground induced actions required the need for innovative design and solutions. The pipe-soil interaction from the expected long-term soil displacements in excess of 36″ required a pipe design that will assure long-term performance of the critical water transmission pipeline. For this project, the solution chosen by the engineers and the owner will use an innovative soil-steel pipe structure that utilizes common trench backfill materials with earthquake resistant steel pipe (ERSP) known as InfraShield joint system (patent pending). Advanced finite element analysis (FEA) utilizing the fully welded ERSP for both 96″ and 84″ buried pipe, as well as the 84″ vertical shaft piping for a deep tunnel under Beltway 8, backfilled in various common soil envelopes, was conducted. The FEA results verified the optimal solutions selected to meet the extreme ground displacement and strain demands on the pipeline. The paper reviews the FEA results of the buried pipeline and risers with the project trench details, along with ERSP performance capabilities and installation details. The paper discusses the fully welded earthquake resistant steel pipe FEA and structural pipe design details for Project Segment B1. The paper reviews the development, full-scale testing, and product details for the ERSP. The ERSP system and its innovative concept have been presented from its initial form at several ASCE Pipeline Conferences from 2017 to 2022 and validated with full-scale physical experiments and extensive numerical simulations via advanced FEA. The system is based primarily on the capability of the buried welded steel pipe material to sustain significant amounts of plastic deformation or strain at defined locations without leaks.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Pipelines 2023
Pages: 344 - 353
History
Published online: Aug 10, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Buried pipes
- Business management
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Engineering fundamentals
- Finite element method
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Infrastructure
- Innovation
- Methodology (by type)
- Numerical methods
- Pipe materials
- Pipeline systems
- Pipelines
- Pipes
- Practice and Profession
- Project management
- Soil dynamics
- Soil mechanics
- Soil-pipe interaction
- Steel pipes
- Water pipelines
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