Robust Optimal Design of Buried Reinforced Concrete Pipe in Trenchless Construction Under Bounded Type Uncertainty Considering Seismic Load

Abstract

The adaptability of micro-tunneling of underground pipeline is getting importance day by day because of minimum disturbance requirement to the busy city life. In the present paper, a Robust Design Optimization (RDO) approach under uncertainty of such buried concrete pipeline is presented incorporating seismic effect. Often sufficient reliable data is unavailable for such problems to treat the involved parameters probabilistically. Hence, these parameters have been treated as Uncertain but Bounded (UBB) type. The limit state functions considered are the bending moment, torsional moment, crack control, shear, and minimum and maximum steel requirements as per ASCE and BS guideline. The results depict that the RDO yields solutions which are insensitive to the variation of input uncertainty. The parametric study shows that by accommodating a small increment in the optimal cost of the pipe, a more robust and reliable design solution can be achieved by the RDO approach in comparison to the deterministic design.