Effects of soil reinforcement on uplift resistance of buried pipeline

Pipeline failure caused by low uplift resistance in soil is a serious environmental and economic issue. Hence, having access to higher uplift resistance of pipeline through soil reinforcement has received considerable attention. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of performing geogrid to increase the uplift resistance of buried pipelines. To examine the effect of burial depth, pipe diameter, length of geogrid layers and the number of geogrid layers on the peak uplift resistance (PUR) of loose sand, 33 small-scale tests were performed in the laboratory. Results of laboratory tests reveal that depth of burial and pipe diameter have a direct effect on the PUR results. The findings show that the number of geogrid layers does not have a remarkable influence on PUR values. While the residual PUR values are of interest, for the same length of geogrid, the use of two layers of geogrid instead of one is advantageous. To verify the experimental results, 33 experiments were back analyzed using "PLAXIS 3D TUNNEL'' program. It was found that experimental and numerical results are in good agreement. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.