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Experimental study on interaction mechanism between pipeline seepage erosion and adjacent foundation pile

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Abstract

Seepage erosion in the water-rich sandy strata, induced by the broken subsurface pipeline, has considerably complex interactions with the adjacent foundation pile. In order to investigate their interaction mechanism, six physical model tests considering different relative positions of pile are carried out in this study. By observing and measuring the variation of eroded form of soil layers, sand loss quantity and soil strength, the blocking effect and local intensification effect of foundation pile on seepage erosion are analyzed quantitatively and intuitively. And it’s found that when the foundation pile is closer to the loss hole, the local intensification of erosion around pile is more significant, while the blocking effect of pile that extends the eroded area is relatively reduced. On the other hand, the earth pressure, bearing capacity, and unbalanced force and moment of pile are measured and calculated during the erosion, and their response characteristics to erosion are obtained that the pile bearing capacity quickly declines, the unbalanced force and moment on pile significantly increase with erosion, and the variation degree is more dramatical when the pile is closer to the loss hole. The research presented by this study is conducive to the safety control of urban underground space and the next-step numerical modeling on this issue.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFC3800905), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52238010, 51978517, 52090082, 52108381), Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (Grant No. 2019-01-07-00-07-456 E00051), Shanghai Science and Technology Committee Program (Grants No. 22XD1430200, 21DZ1200601, 20DZ1201404).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of Minister of Education, Department of Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Dong-Mei Zhang, Xue-Liang Zhang & Wei-Wei Du

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  1. Dong-Mei Zhang
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  2. Xue-Liang Zhang
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Correspondence to Dong-Mei Zhang.

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Zhang, DM., Zhang, XL. & Du, WW. Experimental study on interaction mechanism between pipeline seepage erosion and adjacent foundation pile. Acta Geotech. 19, 1745–1763 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-02018-9

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