Sewerage and Sewage Treatment

by Harold E. Babbitt

CHAPTER IX
DESIGN OF THE SEWER RING

99. Stresses in Buried Pipe.—The stresses which sewer pipe should be designed to resist are: internal bursting pressure, for sewers flowing under pressure; stresses due to handling, for precast pipe; temperature stresses; and external loads. The latter is by far the most important and frequently is the only stress considered in design.

The thickness of a pipe to resist internal stress should be

PR
f_t,

in which P = the intensity of internal pressure; R = the radius of the inside of the pipe, and f_t = the unit-strength of the material in tension

The derivation of this expression is simple. The stresses due to handling cannot be computed and are cared for by a thickness of material dictated by experience. These thicknesses are given for vitrified clay and cement pipe in the specifications in the preceding chapter. Temperature stresses are not allowed for in the design of the pipe ring, but allowance must be made for them in long rigid pipe lines exposed to wide variations in temperature. Such a condition seldom exists in sewerage works.

The external forces are ordinarily the controlling features in the design of sewer rings. The simplest problems arise in the design of a circular pipe. If the external loading is uniform about the circumference of the pipe the internal stresses will all be compression. Almost all other forms of loading will cause bending moments resulting in tension and compression in different parts of the pipe. The maximum bending is caused by two concentrated loads diametrically opposed. As such a condition is extreme it is not cared for in ordinary design, but a loading between this condition and perfect distribution is assumed, as explained in Art. 103.

100. Design of Steel Pipe.—The stresses which may occur in steel sewer pipes are commonly caused by the internal or bursting pressure of the contained liquid. Occasionally a steel pipe may be used as a bridge or as a stressed member of a bridge, but steel pipes should not be used to withstand compression normal to the axis. In order to avoid such stresses the bursting tensile stresses should exceed the external compressive stresses. Such a condition in design requires that buried pipes shall never be emptied, a condition that cannot always be fulfilled. Precaution should be taken, by the installation of proper valves, to prevent the emptying of the pipe at so rapid a rate that a vacuum is created resulting in the collapse of the pipe.

Steel pipes are ordinarily made of plates curved to the proper diameter, the edges being held together by rivets. The design of the pipe consists in the determination of the thickness of the plate and the design of the riveted joint. The longitudinal joint and the thickness of the plate are first designed. The design of the joint consists in determining the diameter and pitch of the rivets and the thickness of the plate so that the full strength of the uncut metal shall be developed as nearly as possible under bearing, tearing, and shearing. This is done by making the efficiency of the joint the same under all stresses. The efficiency of the joint is the ratio of the strength of the joint under any kind of stress to the strength in tension of the unpunched plate. Properties of riveted joints are given in Table 41.

The diameter of the rivet holes should be computed as 1
16 of an inch larger than the diameter of the rivets. Rivets and plates should be designed for the nearest or next largest commercial size, and a generous allowance for corrosion should be made in determining the thickness of the plate. The distance from the edge of the plate to the side of the rivet should not be less than 1½ times the diameter of the rivet. The unit-strengths of the metal are given in the preceding chapter.