Experimental Investigation of the Performance of Buried Flexible Pipe in Reinforced Sand

Abstract The experimental work of this study deals with the performance of pipe in sand with various responses subjected to incremental static loading where the backfill is reinforced with two types of reinforcement (geogrid and geocell) to investigate the effects of backfill cover. The pipes considered are installed in sand with different densities; i.e., loose, medium and dense sand, and a constant burial depth (2D, where D is the pipe diameter). It was concluded that the maximum deformation occurs at the crown of the pipe. The deformation increases when the sand density decreases. For a burial depth equal to 1.5 D, the maximum strain on the pipe crown increases by about 22.5% when the sand changes from dense to medium and 36.8% when it changes from dense to loose. The vertical stress above a pipe buried in loose sand is reduced by 8.3% when the geogrid width is 2B where B is the footing width, while it is equal to 22% when the geogrid width is B. When a geocell is used, the percent reduction is equal to 62%. The percent reduction in the vertical stress above a pipe buried in medium sand is about 28% when the geogrid width is 2B and 40% when the geogrid width is B and equal to 68% when the geocell is used.