Performance Evaluation of Buried Concrete Pipe Considering Soil Pressure and Crack Propagation Using 3D Finite Element Analysis

Numerous factors affect the soil pressure distributions around buried pipes, including shape, size, and stiffness of pipe, burial depth, surrounding soil. Additionally, to some extent, a pipe can benefit from arching effect, where overburden surcharge at crown be supported by adjacent As result, only needs support portion load that is not transferred This paper presents numerical investigations concrete pipes crack propagation under different environmental conditions, such as loading, saturation level, presence voids. To this end, nonlinear elastoplastic model for backfill materials was implemented using finite element software user-defined subroutine. Three two native soils were selected examine material-specific behaviors propagation. For each material, effects loading type, groundwater, voids investigated. These simulation results provide helpful information regarding redistribution behavior various conditions.