Profile-wall HDPE pipes are used increasingly in transportation related construction projects in the United States. These pipes come in a variety of profile-wall configurations, because the design of HDPE pipes has not been standardized. This creates a need to optimize the profile-wall design for these pipes. Collapse of HDPE pipes can result in safety hazards to motorists and disruption of traffic patterns, which can result in large costs to society.
Comparing different profile-wall designs of annular HDPE pipes for deep burial conditions is the primary analysis of this dissertation. Buried corrugated profile-wall pipe was modeled using ABAQUS, a FEM program. Geometric, material, and contact nonlinearities were investigated in determining how these nonlinearities affect the models. Burns and Richard analytical solution will be compared to the FEM analysis obtained.
The structural performance of these models was evaluated four different ways: static analysis, viscoelastic analysis, eigenvalue buckling analysis, and modified Riks method. Comparisons among different profile-wall designs for the viscoelastic analysis and static analysis were made based on the maximum von Mises stress (yielding 4 capacity), the maximum vertical deflection (overdeflection), and maximum horizontal deflection. Buckling was investigated through eigenvalue buckling analysis and modified Riks method analysis. Different profile-walls were compared through eigenvalue buckling analysis to determine at what load local buckling occurred. Different profile-walls were also compared using the modified Riks method analysis to shed some light on the global buckling capacity.
There were some important results from this research. Due to the geometry of the profile-walls considered in this research the profile-walls designs did not behave like thin-wall cylinders or thick-wall cylinders. Modeling these pipes should be threedimensional whenever possible. Adding a cover-plate to a profile-wall design increases the local buckling capacity. Adding a cover-plate to a profile-wall design almost always increases the yield capacity. For the profile-walls considered local bending starts as soon as load is applied. The most important failure modes according to these analyses are yielding and local buckling. Both yielding and local buckling occur at the springline. Local buckling occurs in the middle of the liner or the middle of the cover-plate. Profilewall HDPE pipe culverts fail due to yielding at the springline just inside the junction of the liner and web for most designs, but can fail due to yielding at other locations.