Stress within buried gas pipelines in subsidence areas

Ground subsidence resulting from high-rise buildings became a potential risk to buried natural gas pipelines. When a 130m-long gas pipeline in the neighborhood of the tallest building in China was replaced, a series of strain-foils was installed to monitor stresses within pipelines. The stress was calculated from subsidence data through elastic foundation beam approach. The calculated stresses at different times and locations were compared with measured values directly read from installed monitoring equipment and good agreement was found.