Home» News» The Ocean Geotechnical Research Team of our university has published its latest research findings in Computers and Geotechnics, a top journal in the field of geotechnical engineering
The Ocean Geotechnical Research Team of our university has published its latest research findings in Computers and Geotechnics, a top journal in the field of geotechnical engineering
Recently, the Ocean Geotechnical Team from the School of Civil Engineering and Architecture of our university has published a research paper entitled "Uplift Resistance Mechanism of Pipes in Lightweight Backfill Material of Ceramsite" in Computers and Geotechnics, a top journal in the field of geotechnical engineering.
The first author of the paper is Associate Researcher Wang Le from the School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, the second author is Master’s student Zhang Bowei from the same school. The corresponding authors are Professor Zhang Chunhui from the School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and Researcher Liu Bo (Postdoctoral Fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University). This research was co-supervised by Professor Tian Yinghui from The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Pipelines serve as the lifeline for oil and gas resource development in China, and most onshore pipelines are buried. When buried pipelines cross active faults, fault displacement changes the soil constraint conditions around the pipeline, significantly increases the earth pressure exerted on the pipeline, and consequently threatens the structural safety of the pipeline.
To address this issue, this study innovatively proposes the use of ceramsite as a new type of lightweight backfill material, and conducts a comparative study with traditional sand backfill. Model tests and discrete element method (DEM) numerical simulations show that, compared with conventional sand backfill, the low density and smooth surface of ceramsite significantly reduce the pressure on the pipeline during fault dislocation.
The study also reveals that the stress path near the sliding surface approaches a drained path, which challenges the traditional assumption of “constant mean stress”.
This research not only provides a low-cost solution for disaster mitigation of cross-fault lifeline engineering, but also offers a new approach for predicting pipeline mechanical behavior under complex geological conditions, showing broad engineering application prospects.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province, and the Major Project of Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Key Laboratory.