NEHRP Clearinghouse

Title
Discussion on Soil Restraint Against Horizontal Motion of Pipes; Seismic Vulnerability, Behavior and Design of Underground Piping System.
File
PB290205.pdf
Author(s)
Wang, L. R. L.
Source
National Science Foundation, Washington, DC. Applied Science and Research Applications., January 1978, 13 p.
Abstract
A systematic way of assessing the adequacy and vulnerability of water/sewer distribution systems subjected to seismic loads and future design methodologies are developed. This technical memorandum comments on the comprehensive report issued in October 1977 by J. Audibert and K. Nyman on the current state of knowledge of soil resistance to horizontal pipe motion, known as the soil subgrade reaction. It is pointed out that these authors treated buried pipes with discrete springs for the analysis of the soil-structure interactions problems. The discussion in this memorandum supplements the report in two respects. Firstly, this discussion stresses the usage of continuous soil springs in the analysis. For buried piping systems which may involve many nodes and members, discrete springs are not considered to be able to model soil resistance properly for given member and rotations. Secondly, from an analysis of existing literature, correlations of the soil horizontal resistance to several other basic soil parameters, other than the ultimate strength used in the report, are made.
Keywords
Seismic design; Earthquake resistant structures; Water pipes; Subsurface structures; Earth movements; Sewer pipes; Ground motion; Earthquake engineering; Soil dynamics; Piping systems; Pipelines; Earthquakes