Behavior of Vertical Pressure Imposed on the Bottom of a Trench

A series of model tests were performed to investigate the behavior of vertical pressure imposed on the bottom of a trench. The tests were conducted in two phases to generate soil arching due to soil deformation: (1) the backfilling phase and (2) the lowering-bottom phase. First, the backfilling phase was performed by filling sand into the trench, in which soil deformation was developed due to selfcompaction by the weight of the sand. The lowering-bottom phase was then conducted by lowering the bottom plate of the trench to induce additional soil deformation. The behavior of the vertical pressure acting on the bottom of the trench during the backfilling phase can simulate that of the vertical pressure imposed on the bottom of buried rigid pipes. The behaviors of buried flexible pipes could be observed during the lowering-bottom phase, in which both the minimum and the maximum vertical pressures could be obtained according to the induced soil deformation. A novel method for predicting the vertical pressures in each phase was proposed. The agreements between the predictions by the proposed method and the experimental results were demonstrated.