ON THE SOIL SPRING CONSTANTS FOR BURIED PIPELINE STRUCTURES

Abstract

In order to estimate the soil spring constants for the earthquake structural design of buried pipeline structures, a method using the theory of static elasticity is presented here and the equations of the constants are derived analytically. The soil spring constant in the axial direction depends on the shear modulus of the soil deposits G and the ratio λ between the radius where the displacement is zero and the radius of buried pipeline structure. The constant for the direction perpendicular to the axis of the pipeline depends on G, Poisson's ratio of the soil deposits ν and λ.