Lateral force-displacement relationships for shallowly buried pipe reinforced by geocell

In this study, geocell reinforcements are proposed as a thrust countermeasure for shallowly buried pipeline bends and tees. The proposed method is easy to construct and has shorter construction time since it does not require curing compared to conventional concrete blocks. The lateral loading tests were conducted on the plates reproducing pipe bends or tees to verify their effectiveness while understanding deformation mechanisms. In addition to changing the conditions of plate width and geocell pocket size, additional experiments were conducted with different geocell reinforcement dimensions, geocell tensile stiffness and seam tensile properties. An equation for predicting the force-displacement relationship was developed as part of the proposed design method. The experimental results showed that the sides of the reinforced ground are not fully integrated when the width of the geocell reinforcement is large relative to the plate width. It was also found that the maximum force hardly decreased, although the displacement increased slightly due to the reduction of the tensile stiffness of the geocell and the tensile force at the geocell seams. Moreover, a hyperbolic approximation of the displacement-force relationship for geocell reinforcement loaded was proposed, and the calculated values agreed well with the experimental values.