Suffosion Holes as the Results of a Breakage of a Buried Water Pipe

Abstract

The result of a breakage of a buried water pipe is the water movement in soil, which can cause that fine soil particles are washed out from the solid matrix and transported through pores (suffosion process IntroductionDepressions or holes creating on the soil surface as a result of suffosion can be very dangerous, especially in urban areas. It is widely known that the most hazardous phenomena of this kind relate to water-engineering structures [1,2,3]. It stems from the fact that failures and damages of pipes occur in water, sewage and storm water systems all over the world during their operation [4,5,6]. Even the high-tech methods of pipes condition assessment do not enable to prevent leakages occurrence, because of their random character and multiplicity of their reasons [7,8,9]. Still insufficient knowledge about them [10] is caused by many different, both static (pipe and soil parameters) and dynamic (hydraulic working conditions), factors [11,12,13,14,15]. Creation of suffosion holes is a phenomenon specially typical and onerous for water supply systems of a high intensity rate placed in internally unstable soils. The result of a breakage of a buried water pipe is the water movement in soil, which can cause that fine soil particles are washed out from the solid matrix and transported through pores (suffosion process) [16,17,18,19,20,21]. As a result, depressions or holes can form on the soil surface. Holes creating on the soil surface by water outflowing after a failure of a buried pipeline (suffosion holes), are in different shapes and sizes.Recognition of factors influencing holes shapes and sizes would facilitate the prevention of hazardous suffosion effects connected with failures of water distribution systems. In the range of the presented article, the influence of pressure head in a water pipe on dimensions of suffosion holes was analysed. The basis of the analysis was results of laboratory investigations of the controlled leakage from a buried water pipe.

Neural Network Approach for Availability Indicator Prediction

“…Moreover, it is necessary to remember that assessing the failure frequency of water pipes should be carried out together with e.g. impact of water leakages on the soil (suffusion processes) [35] because it is also very important problem related to the environmental engineering.…”

FEM simulation of water lost through damaged household water connection

“…The experiment was repeated 6 times. Details about the laboratory setup construction, the experiment methodology and performance are given in [19]. The numerical simulation was conducted in the FEFLOW v. 5.3 software, using the finite element analysis (FEM) to solve the groundwater flow equation of both saturated and unsaturated media.…”

The assessment of water loss from a damaged distribution pipe using the FEFLOW software

“…Depending on the intensity of leakage from a damaged buried pipe, water can flow to the soil surface just after the failure occurrence or much later. It is also possible that water will never outflow to the soil surface, especially from hard-to-detect background leakages [3]. As the volume of lost water strongly depends on the pressure head and the time taken to localize the place of a pipe breakage, over the past decades numerous leakage detection methods and tools have been developed.…”