Numerical simulation of dynamic response of water in buried pipeline under explosion

Water pipelines are as a most important lifeline that may be subjected to explosion. In this paper, parametric studies were performed on some pipes buried in two soil types under blast loadings. The effects of different parameters, such as the physical properties of water, air, soil, pipe, and T.N.T were investigated. The Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method was used in the LS-DYNA software. In general, the results revealed that a higher soil density causes a higher pressure on and stress transfer through a pipe. Explosion under a lower soil density causes less damage to a pipe and acts as a damper under the exploding waves. Based on the results, increased pressure and principal stress were resulted from the enhancements of the shear and bulk moduli and soil density, i.e., the former factors were very sensitive to the latter ones. The pressures of the substantial points of the pipes were obtained. The maximum explosion pressure and minimum pressure in the buried pipes occurred at the angles of nearly 0° to 45° and 45° to 90°, respectively.