Backfill pressures within a reinstated trench: The Gatineau field project.

Abstract

To the backdrop of shrinking municipal budgets and aging water distribution system infrastructure, the National Research Council of Canada undertook a joint research project with the City of Gatineau, PQ, to better understand the nature of backfill pressures acting through the reinstated trench and upon buried water pipe. This thesis first presents the general details of this joint project focusing on backfill temperature and pressure data for the period August 1994 to August 1996. These data are then analyzed leading to a description of the relationship between frost depth and backfill pressure. Contrary to experience, the trend that emerges, in the case of the Gatineau field site, is that pressure and frost depth are inversely related. Finally, problems associated with the data and related to instrumentation are explored with the objective of developing guidelines or recommendations for the development of future field research sites.