Effect of Burial Angle on Pipeline Response to Landslide: 1 g Shake Table Tests

Buried pipeline response to earthquake induced landslide is one of the challenging problems in geotechnical earthquake engineering. In this study, two physical models were constructed to investigate the effect of burial angle of the pipes on their response to the landslide. Similitude laws for 1g shake table tests were employed to construct the physical models. In each model, four aluminum pipes were installed at different positions but at identical depths from the model surface. All the properties in both models - except the pipes angles relative to the slope - are the same. The pipes were heavily instrumented with pair strain gauges to measure pure bending strain. Input shaking consisted of 25 sinusoidal cycles of loading with amplitude of 0.32 g and frequency of 5 Hz. The results showed that reduction of pipe burial angles from90 to 70 degrees in relative to the slope direction, decreased bending strain in the pipes. Therefore, reduction of burial angle of the pipes can be considered as one of the remediation methods against landslide. Also, in both models, the lower part of the slope was the most critical location for buried pipes