Application of Foamed Concrete Backfill in Improving Antiexplosion Performance of Buried Pipelines

Abstract

Foamed concrete backfill has been proved to be an ideal material to improve the bearing capacity of underground engineering structures with the exception of buried pipelines. In order to study the role of foamed concrete backfill in improving the antiexplosion performance of buried pipelines, ANSYS/LS-DYNA finite-element software is used to analyze the dynamic response of buried pipelines under explosion load. The stress, velocity, acceleration, and displacement responses of the elements and nodes at the specified position on the pipe cross section and pipe shaft are investigated. The results show that after adding foamed concrete backfill, the effective stress, velocity, acceleration, and displacement peak attenuation reach 3%–8%, 4%–20%, 3%–22%, and 10% respectively, indicating that foamed concrete backfill can effectively improve the antiexplosion performance of buried pipelines. In this paper, the influence of physical and mechanical parameters of backfill on the dynamic response of pipelines is investigated as well.