ELASTIC ANALYSIS OF BURIED PIPES UNDER SURFACE PATCH LOADINGS. DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE

A discussion of a paper with the aforementioned title by S.M. Fernando and J.P. Carter, published in this journal (Volume 124, Number 8, August 1998), is presented. The discusser comments on the idealizations regarding the stress-strain behavior of the backfill materials, highlighting previous work on the effects of live loads on buried structures. The discusser agrees that numerical idealizations of complex soil-structure interaction problems are essential in facilitating practical engineering applications, but cautions that all foreseeable cases must be considered and the results of different numerical approaches examined. Discussion is followed by closure from the authors.