Soil Liquefaction-Induced Uplift of Buried Pipes in Sand-Granulated Mixture: Numerical Modeling

Abstract

The significant uplift of buried pipes observed during recent earthquakes has showed the need for further research in remediation methods for soil liquefaction. Sand-granulated rubber mixture is reported as a new soil improvement method that can be applied as a liquefaction mitigation filling material around buried pipe. In this study, the effects of pipe size, burial depth, and shaking intensity on the pipe uplift and the liquefaction potential of the sand-tire derived granulated rubber mixture placed around the buried pipes were investigated using numerical models. First, the result of 1-g shaking table tests was used for the verification of the numerical analysis. Comparing the numerical results and the experimental measurements showed that the numerical simulation using the UBCSAND constitutive model could accurately estimate the liquefaction-induced uplift of the buried pipes as well as the related failure. Then, a parametric study was conducted to investigate the effects of the pipe diameter, the pipe depth, and the value of the acceleration on pipe uplift and liquefaction potential when the SGR mixture was placed as filling material. Eventually, an analytical formula was proposed to estimate the liquefaction-induced uplift of buried pipes, and the soil failure mode was categorized according to the pipe's burial depth ratio.