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Abstract Previous studies show that the soil arching considerably affects the earth pressure distribution around the buried pipelines. However，very few studies investigated comprehensively how the soil arching effect changed with respect to the height of the backfill and the diameter of buried pipes during construction. This research presents the details of a study on the soil arching effect and earth pressures acting on the crown of the buried HDPE pipes. A series of field tests were conducted for the measurements of earth pressures acting on the HDPE pipes and of soil pressures at different elevations over HDPE pipes during construction. The results reveal that the soil arching effect activate in the backfills beside and above HDPE pipes increase remarkably with the increasing of the height of the backfill. At a given backfill height，the degree of soil arching effect increases with the decreasing of vertical distance from the crown of pipes. The earth pressures acting on the crown of pipes computed by Marston theory are 3% to 31% higher than those measured in the field tests. Based on a series of finite element analyses，an empirical equation was proposed to predict the earth pressure acting on the crown of HDPE pipes during soil backfilling. Predicted earth pressures using the proposed equation are in good agreement with the field test data reported by the previous studies.
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Received: 14 January 2014
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2015, Vol. 34 
