Abstract
Recently it is required that pipelines are buried shallowly because of reduction of construction cost. Thrust force is generated at a pipeline bend due to internal water pressure. It was found that the method of shallowly buried pipeline is effective against uplift force by buoyancy. However it is not clarified that the method is effective against lateral force as a thrust force. We proposed that the method of shallowly buried pipeline is installed at a pipeline bend and a series of lateral loading tests for shallowly buried bend were carried out in order to verify the effectiveness of this method. The results show that the lateral resistance in the proposed method was increased. In addition, numerical analyses by the two dimensional discrete element methods (DEM) were performed in order to clarify the resistance mechanism of the ground against lateral loading of pipe.
