Mechanical responses of bell‐and‐spigot joints in buried prestressed concrete cylinder pipe under coupled service and surcharge loads

Abstract Prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) is widely used in hydraulic engineering. The bell‐and‐spigot joint is a weak point along a PCCP pipeline, since damage of joint can affect the operation of the whole pipeline. In this paper, a three‐dimensional numerical model of buried PCCP, considering the simulation of rubber gasket in bell‐and‐spigot joint is established. The fluid–structure coupling of PCCP is accomplished using the Mesh‐based parallel Code Coupling Interface (MpCCI), where the pipe and the surrounding soil are characterized in the software ABAQUS, and the pressurized water is modeled in the software FLUENT. The force and rotation angle at joints of PCCP under different conditions, including surcharge load, loading location, cover depth, and internal pressure, are analyzed. It is shown that the rotation angle of joint exceeds the allowable value, when the surcharge load is greater than 180 kPa. Compared with the effect of surcharge load, the offset distance (i.e., distance between the loading position and the pipe axis) has a greater influence on the development of horizontal displacement and rotation angle. As the offset distance increases, both the horizontal displacement and rotation angle at joints increase first, and they decrease after the peak.