Dynamic behaviour of pipes under earthquake loading

It is well know that loose saturated sands can suffer liquefaction when subjected to earthquake loading. Soil liquefaction may result in buried pipes floating to the surface. To investigate the uplift behaviour of buried pipelines during earthquakes in liquefiable loose soils, shaking table tests were conducted. The effect of depth of embedment of the pipe on its behaviour was investigated. In this paper a series of experiments carried out on a shaking table in order to observe a pipe under seismic loading are discussed. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to obtain the soil displacements around the pipe during the earthquake loading. The effect of different intensity earthquakes was also investigated.