Assessment of the Behavior of Buried Concrete Pipelines Subjected to Ground Rupture: Experimental Study

Abstract

Rapid assessment of damage to buried pipelines from earthquake-induced ground deformation is a crucial component to recovery efforts. This paper reports on the first year of a four-year study aimed at developing rapid, reliable, and cost-effective sensing systems for health monitoring and damage detection for buried concrete pipelines subjected to ground deformation. A custom-designed sensing strategy was implemented in a ground rupture experiment with a scaled-down concrete pipeline. The behavior of the pipeline, including the failure modes and damage inflicted to the pipe segments, was monitored during the test. Two modes of failure were identified in the test: (1) compression associated with telescoping-type deformation and (2) bending at the pipeline joints closest to the fault plane. Consequently, future research toward advancing sensing technology for concrete pipelines will likely focus on the behavior of the joints.