Seismic reliability analysis of urban buried water supply pipelines

The solid model of buried pipelines and soil was built with the finite element software Ansys11.0. Considering the pipeline-soil interaction, the time history analysis was conducted on the buried pipelines under the effects of earthquake and the response peaks of buried pipelines at different earthquake levels were obtained. According to the mean and standard deviation of pipeline resistance, the reliable probability of the buried pipelines at the corresponding earthquake level was calculated using the structural reliability theory. Q area of W city was taken as an engineering example and the seismic reliability of water supply pipelines buried underground was calculated. The results demonstrate that there is about 15% difference between the results of the finite element timehistory method and those of the method of China's seismic code, revealing the conservativeness of the latter method; the earthquake damages to large-diameter pipelines are less than those to small-bore pipelines.The flexible joints have better ductility than rigid ones and thus suffer less earthquake damages The earthquake damages to short pipelines are less than those to long pipelines, and the gray iron pipelines have relatively poor anti-seismic performance. © 2013 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY.