Bringing Lifeline Research to Vertically Integrated Classrooms via a Four-Point Bending Test of a Pipe

Research dealing with earthquake response of lifelines was brought to classrooms at a predominantly undergraduate urban university as part of an education, outreach, and training activity centered on a simple four-point laboratory-bending test of a ductile iron pipe. A Freshman Civil Engineering Design class, a Junior Structures Laboratory class, and a Graduate Structures class participated by integrating the subject matter amongst these classes. The experiment simply represented the pipeline behavior subject to fault displacement by simple fourpoint static bending tests. In addition, the ductile iron pipe was analyzed with Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis software to validate experimental results. This simplification is much needed to bring these concepts to undergraduate classrooms. The freshman students were also required to perform a preliminary design of a new water conveyance system, which includes a pipeline that crosses an active earthquake fault. The junior structures laboratory class concentrated on four-point pipe experiments as well as simple structural modeling. The graduate structures students used more sophisticated analysis techniques. Using a pipe experiment as a common theme it was possible to take various applications of the same experiment to different courses.