Truck Impact on Buried Water Pipes in Interdependent Water and Road Infrastructures

Abstract

In the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructures to adapt to the rapidly changing natural and social environment, the complexity of the dependencies and interdependencies within critical infrastructure systems need to be fully understood, as they affect various components of risk and lead to cascading failures. Water and road infrastructures are highly co-located but often managed and maintained separately. One important aspect of their interdependence is the impact of vehicle loading on a road on underlying water pipes. The existing studies lack a comprehensive evaluation of this subject and do not consider possible critical failure scenarios. This study constructed finite element models to analyze the responses of buried water pipes to vehicle loads under an array of scenarios, including various loads, pipe materials, pipe dimensions, and possible extreme conditions, such as corrosion in pipes and a sinkhole under the pipe. The results showed negligible impact of heavy trucks on buried water pipes. The pipe deflection under a maximum allowable truck load in the worst condition was still within the allowable range specified in standards such as those from the American Water Works Association. This implies that the impact of heavy vehicles on water pipes may not need to be considered in the context of the interdependency between water and road infrastructures, which leads to a more unidirectional dependency between these two infrastructures.

Evaluation of Pipe Materials in Water System Networks Using the Theory of Advanced Multi-Criteria Analysis

“…According to reference [21], HDPE and PVC pipes are widely used for water distribution. To investigate pipe failure, cast iron (CI), steel, ductile iron (DI), asbestos cement (AC) [1], PVC [22,23], and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) [24][25][26][27][28][29] pipes were studied. As also mentioned in these study [1], during the rehabilitation of a water pipeline, several alternatives to pipe materials, including ductile iron, cast iron, polyethylene, concrete, and asbestos cement, were compared to determine the most degraded material for replacement.…”

“…Heavy vehicles driving over buried HDPE, PVC, and DI pipes were modeled using finite element analysis. These loads had minimal effects under many conditions, including corrosion [24].…”

“…These tubes were chosen after a thorough review of the aforementioned literature. According to the cited sources [1,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], these are the most significant water pipes in general.…”

Application of GIS and MCDM on Natural Environment Effect toward the Durability of Water pipe: A Conceptual Study

“…Selangor state is one of the thirteen states of Malaysia and is located in West Malaysia at the estimated coordinate 3.0738° N, 101.5183° E. The total area is about 8000 square kilometers and according to Uddin (2021), the total population is 6,555,400 [6]. The mean annual temperature is around 26 degrees with average daily range between 21 to 32 degree and receives annual rainfall of 1200 mm [7].…”