ABSTRACT
The progressive decline in performance of aged pipes is not always evident in practice, particularly for buried water-transmission mains. A geomechanical approach can provide interesting elements to asses and/or predict their integrity. Simplified Winkler-type models can effectively represent the complexity of soil-pipe interaction. The spatial variability of the soil is necessary to understand how this variability can be used to study the structural behaviour of the buried pipe. The numerical modelling of the soil-pipe system adopted in this study combines different strategies and steps in order to speed up and optimise the computation in an uncertain context that involves the execution of several simulations. The quantification of criticality indicators, in a context of asset management, allows to evaluate the performance of a pipe, according to a reliability approach, with respect to limit states defined in the framework of inspection, maintenance or renewal strategies of the pipelines.
