Evaluating the isolation effect of the soil-rubber mixture (SRM) around buried pipes during ground vibrations

Lifelines and buried pipeline systems in seismic areas should be designed to resist dynamic and static loads and provide safety and serviceability, especially during ground vibrations. Taking advantage of recycled material such as crumb rubber in the material around the pipe for optimizing the buried pipe system behavior could be an appropriate method if it would improve the performance of the buried pipelines under critical situations. The current study evaluates the effect of using soil-rubber mixture (SRM) around the buried pipes to absorb the vibration energy, protect the pipe, and reduce pipes' deformation. Results represent that the optimum dimension of area for using SRM around the pipe, which will reduce the pipe deformation and simultaneously makes the design economical, is a square by the dimension of three times the diameter of a circular pipe, through which the pipe is placed in the middle. Moreover, the results have shown that SRM is more effective in pipe protection and reducing pipe deformation than the other parameters.

Keywords:

Buried pipelines , Soil-Rubber Mixture (SRM) , Isolation , Dynamic Analysis , Numerical modeling