Location
New York, New York
Date
14 Apr 2004, 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Abstract
The Ipanema Beach offshore sewage pipeline was installed thirty years ago in water depths up to 31m, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has a unique design, because steel piles were driven every 41 to 50m at joint along its length, in order to support it, keeping a constant gradient flow. These piles maintain the pipeline above mudline. After only a few years a first of these pile supports collapsed, allowing the pipeline to drop on the seabed, because of the occurrence of micro-cracks triggered by corrosion and environmental loads. Similar failures took place again before corrective measures could be taken. The main challenge faced at the end of 1999 was to solve the problem, thus avoiding any major consequence to the environment in the vicinity of the City of Rio de Janeiro, without having to interrupt the sewage pumping. This challenge was met by designing a non-conventional foundation reinforcement. In December 2001 the final support was reinforced. It is estimated that the entire life of the structure was increased by at least 30 years.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
5th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2004 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Mello, Jayme R. C. and Galgoul, Nelson Szilard, "Foundation Reinforcement of the Ipanema Beach Offshore Sewage Pipeline" (2004). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 52.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/5icchge/session01/52
Foundation Reinforcement of the Ipanema Beach Offshore Sewage Pipeline
New York, New York
The Ipanema Beach offshore sewage pipeline was installed thirty years ago in water depths up to 31m, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has a unique design, because steel piles were driven every 41 to 50m at joint along its length, in order to support it, keeping a constant gradient flow. These piles maintain the pipeline above mudline. After only a few years a first of these pile supports collapsed, allowing the pipeline to drop on the seabed, because of the occurrence of micro-cracks triggered by corrosion and environmental loads. Similar failures took place again before corrective measures could be taken. The main challenge faced at the end of 1999 was to solve the problem, thus avoiding any major consequence to the environment in the vicinity of the City of Rio de Janeiro, without having to interrupt the sewage pumping. This challenge was met by designing a non-conventional foundation reinforcement. In December 2001 the final support was reinforced. It is estimated that the entire life of the structure was increased by at least 30 years.
