Study of Joint Effect on Pipe in Pipe Jacking Method

Abstract

Recently, pipe jacking method has become popular in micro tunnelling because of its benefits for economy and environment. However, jacked pipes have complex performance during installation process, particularly when the pipes are driven through a curved alignment. In such a case, the joints between the pipes significantly affect the behaviour of the pipes and the alignment deviation. To investigate the influence of joints on pipes, full scale tests and numerical modelling were carried out to simulate pipe jacking of two consecutive pipes in both straight and curved alignments. It was found that stress concentration occurs along pipe length at the range where cushion materials are set for both alignments and at the concave side of curve for the curved alignment. In addition, it was confirmed that the stack pipe model gives a reasonable result to simulate the experiments for the pipe jacking method.