STRESS ANALYSIS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE ANCHOR BLOCKS FOR UNDERGROUND PIPELINES USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

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  Nabeel A. Jasim   |      Adi Adnan Abdu-Alrazaq   |   

This paper deals with the behavior of reinforced concrete anchor blocks for underground steel pipelines under the effect of loads caused by internal pressure and temperature variation due to transportation of hydrocarbon products. The finite element method is used to carry out the analysis using ANSYS 5.4 program. To study the effect of soil, it is represented by springs with different values for modulus of subgrade reaction in normal and tangential reactions. It is concluded that increasing the values of the modulus of subgrade reactions, kn, and ks, of the soil surrounding the reinforced concrete anchor block, causes an increase in the failure loads of the block. But at high values of these modules, the rate of this increase in the failure load will decrease. The area of the passive face of the concrete anchor block is found to have the main effect on the failure load as compared to the length of that block. The failure load of the concrete anchor blocks that have square cross-sections is 1.33 times larger compared to that of rectangular sections. It is also concluded that locating the steel flange at the middle of the block leads to larger resistance of anchor blooks as compared to any other position.