Truck Impact on Buried Water Pipes in Interdependent Water and Road Infrastructures

Shihab Uddin, Qing Lu and Hung Nguyen
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Shihab Uddin: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Avenue ENG030, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Qing Lu: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Avenue ENG030, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Hung Nguyen: Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Avenue ENG030, Tampa, FL 33620, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: In the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructures to adapt to the rapidly changing natural and social environment, the complexity of the dependencies and interdependencies within critical infrastructure systems need to be fully understood, as they affect various components of risk and lead to cascading failures. Water and road infrastructures are highly co-located but often managed and maintained separately. One important aspect of their interdependence is the impact of vehicle loading on a road on underlying water pipes. The existing studies lack a comprehensive evaluation of this subject and do not consider possible critical failure scenarios. This study constructed finite element models to analyze the responses of buried water pipes to vehicle loads under an array of scenarios, including various loads, pipe materials, pipe dimensions, and possible extreme conditions, such as corrosion in pipes and a sinkhole under the pipe. The results showed negligible impact of heavy trucks on buried water pipes. The pipe deflection under a maximum allowable truck load in the worst condition was still within the allowable range specified in standards such as those from the American Water Works Association. This implies that the impact of heavy vehicles on water pipes may not need to be considered in the context of the interdependency between water and road infrastructures, which leads to a more unidirectional dependency between these two infrastructures.

Keywords: infrastructure interdependency; truck load; water infrastructure; transportation infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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