2025 Volume 81 Issue 13 Article ID: 24-13550
Water pipelines are typically buried underground, but at locations where they cross rivers, they are constructed as water pipe bridges. The 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake significantly damaged the ground behind bridge abutments, affecting many water pipe bridges. Bellows-type expansion joints, installed to absorb pipeline displacement, exhibit large deformation modes due to ground deformation. However, the current bellows design methods are based on fatigue design for cyclic displacement and the critical displacement for large deformation modes has not been defined. This study conducted displacement loading experiments on bellows-type expansion joints to investigate the critical displacement under large deformation modes. The experimental results indicated that the critical displacement for water pipe bridge design can be determined by the geometric dimensions of the bellows.
