Referans Bilgileri

Behaviour of buried water supply pipelines in earthquake zones

Iain Tromans

2004/01

Earthquakes can cause extensive damage to buried water supply pipelines, resulting in major financial losses for water utility operators and lengthy disruption of an essential service for whole communities. This thesis focuses on the behaviour of buried water supply pipelines subject to earthquake effects; particularly the transient ground strains caused by the passage of seismic waves.

Existing empirical relations for the prediction of earthquake-induced pipeline damage are reviewed, with specific emphasis on identifying the reliability of the datasets used. Improvements are made to an existing dataset and areas of uncertainty in the characterisation of the seismic action highlighted.

New predictive relationships are derived for strong-motion peaks from a substantial database of strong-motion records obtained from fifty-one significant European earthquakes. The sensitivity of each dataset to the record processing technique is investigated. The peak ground velocity estimations are particularly useful for prediction of earthquake-induced pipeline damage rates.

Results are presented of a post-earthquake investigation into water pipeline damage in the town of Düzce, Turkey, caused by the Kocaeli and Düzce earthquakes in 1999. Temporal variations in pipeline repair statistics before and after the earthquakes are analysed to identify earthquake-related pipe breaks. In the absence of detailed geological data, site conditions in Düzce are characterised using microtremor measurements. GIS-based analysis reveals no clear correlations between spatial distributions of pipeline damage and site characteristics. A reasonable correlation isobserved between pipeline damage and building damage. The spatial variation in pipeline damage rates as a result of the Kocaeli earthquake is used to infer the spatial distribution of peak ground velocity based on an existing pipeline fragility relationship. Interpretation of pipeline damage rates caused by the Düzce earthquake is obscured by the effects of the earlier Kocaeli earthquake.

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine London

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Doktora tezi

Dosyalar

İlgili Kayıtlar

Konu Başlıkları

Yorumlar