Long-term performance of buried high-density polyethylene plastic piping

The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the service life of HDPE (High Density PolyEthylene) pipes. The following experimental tasks were carried out: (i) procurement of materials, and fabrication of test setups; (ii) creep evaluation: the performance of buried pipes (notched/unnotched), subjected to live loading, was studied in soil chambers for three levels of loading (service, 2/3 and 1/3 of service). The long-term behavior was accelerated with super-ambient temperatures; (iii) field monitoring: strains and diametral changes were measured for 10,000 hours. The analytical investigations were as follows: (i) extrapolation of the long-term performance at ambient temperature, based on the Bi-directional and the Arrhenius methods and (ii) 2-D Finite Element Analysis, using the software CANDE. The findings include: (i) the deflection threshold (7.5% vertical change of diameter) as the governing failure condition, (ii) similar life predictions, for Bi-directional and Arrhenius methods, with service lives of about 80 and 30 years at ambient temperature, for unnotched and notched specimens, respectively, subjected to maximum loading, and (iii) a reasonable agreement between analytical and experimental values.