SCALE EFFECT IN PIPE-SOIL INTERACTION

Abstract

The buried pipes are an important medium for transporting the fluids. On average, pipelines transport over 500 ton-miles of product per gallon of fuel, ships 250 ton-miles, rails 125 ton-miles, trucks 10 ton-miles, and aircraft even less then 10 ton-miles per gallon of fuel. The gravity system requires no fuel for pumping. Most of these are buried pipelines. These buried pipelines are less hazardous, and hence environment friendly than other media of transportation. They produce less pollution, eliminate losses of material due to evaporation, and generally reduce loss and damage to the products that are transporting. The analysis of buried pipes is so complicated because of interaction of pipe and soil each with vastly different properties. This presentation includes the study of dimensional effect, model effect and combined effect called scale-effect when a model (pipe-soil) subjected to lateral loads. For studying dimensional effect, pipes of diameter ranging from 25mm to 1000mm...