Engineering Design and Analysis of Pipe Ramming Installations

The trenchless technology known as pipe ramming for construction of culverts and buried pipes under roadways or other infrastructure has gained significant popularity due to its cost-effectiveness and ability to alleviate surface disruptions associated with open-cut trenching. Although the experience with pipe ramming is increasing, there has been remarkably little technical guidance available for engineers to appropriately specify aspects of a pipeline or culvert installation, including the planning of feasible layouts, rates of penetration, pipe diameters, and hammers. This research provides a comprehensive engineering framework for evaluation of culvert installations at the planning phase to address the gaps in knowledge associated with pipe ramming. Presently there are no existing and proven techniques for prediction of settlement, vibration, driving stresses, soil resistance to ramming, and drivability for pipe ramming installations. This study has adopted existing drivability, soil resistance, settlement, and vibration prediction models from pipe jacking, microtunneling, and pile driving models and examined their applicability in pipe ramming installations, resulting in new and technology-specific design guidance. The development of this comprehensive engineering guidance is based on engineering calculations empirically tuned using a database of actual performance measurements. Field observations of five production installations and a full-scale experiment were conducted to form the performance database employed to understand the mechanics associated with pipe ramming installations, ranging from vertical ground movements, ground vibrations, and installatio