AWWA INF54003

The manufacture of prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) has been governed byAWWA C-301 for several decades. The pipe suppliers used either Method A or MethodB to help the design engineer and the owner design and specify PCCP pipe formajor water transmission and sewer force main projects. Numerous owners anddesign engineers began to question the validity of these over-simplified designcurves in the appendices of AWWA C-301, particularly when pipes intended to lastforever or for a long time were falling apart. The American Concrete PressurePipe Association (ACPPA) and its members responded to this criticism bydeveloping a pair of new standards, namely AWWA C301 and C304, to addressmaterial properties and design methodology. The design steps involved in C304 areso complicated that ACPPA had elaborate computer software developed to implementC304 for designers of this pipe. In most cases, the software was purchasedprimarily by the pipe manufacturers who belong to the ACPPA and either they wouldrun design analyses for interested parties or ACPPA would sell a copy of thesoftware for an enormous fee. The authors of this paper were experts on a numberof lawsuits involving PCCP failures and came across the above problems. As partof the discovery phases for the members in the legal profession, the authorsdeveloped a simple spreadsheet based on C304-92 to check the structural adequacyof PCCP lines designed to the old C301-72 to C301-84 design standards ratherefficiently. This paper provides an overview of this approach and a sampleapplication of this spreadsheet for specific PCCP projects to illustrate thepoint that an adequate design methodology does not necessarily have to becomplicated. Includes 4 references, tables.

Product Details

Edition:

Vol. - No.

Published:

06/01/2001

Number of Pages:

10

File Size:

1 file , 270 KB