Calculation and Analysis of Interaction Between Buried Pipeline and Soil

In order to gain a clear idea of mechanism of stress and deformation for buried pipeline, the soil pressure on the buried pipeline computation boiled down to solving the gravity field in two-dimensional elastic medium embedded with an elastic ring hole stress concentration problem. Based on considering the deformation coordination of pipe-soil contact surface, the stress function method was used to derive the elasticity solution of the soil pressure around the pipeline. It established the analytical relationship between pressure around the pipeline and pipeline section stiffness, providing a new way for pipeline force calculating. Example analysis indicated that the pipe circumferential stress using the stress function method was quite closed to the finite element calculation and the simplified stress distribution around pipeline was convex parabola. Through the calculation of pipe-soil interaction, it was further indicated that besides the positive soil stress acting on the buried pipeline, there had large value of shear stress along the pipeline. The role of this part should be considered in calculating the force acting on the buried pipeline.