No.

29-9

Journal of Structural Engineering

Vol. 29. No. 2 July-September 2002 pp. 91-96

Elastic properties of PVC pipes

I
p

Mohan K. Neelam*, Sriram Kalaga**

Experimental investigations to determine the elastic material properties of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) pipes are
reported. Tension tests were conducted on several specimens to determine the stress-strain relationships. Both axial
and lateral strains were measured. Ring Bending tests on circular PVC rings under parallel plate loading were
performed to determine the pipe flexural stiffness. Short pipes were tested under uniaxial compression to evaluate the
buckling load. The elastic parameters needed to describe the typical nonlinear nature of the PVC material were
calculated.

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) plastics are popular materials used

in many engineering applications such as buried pipes, sewer
lines and water supply conduits. PVC is a thermoplastic polymer with good strength, toughness and resistance to acids as
well as corrosion. In engineering mechanics terminology, plastics are considered isotropic but highly nonlinear, exhibiting
typical nonlinearity during the pre-yield stages of tensile loading. For constitutive modeling purposes, plastics are referred
to as a nonlinear, isotropic, elastic-perfectly plastic material '
The behavior of PVC plastic pipes under external loads
is dependent on many structural parameters. Considering the
material nonlinearity typically associated with PVC, it is necessary to determine the material behavior under both tensile
and compressive loads. In-service deflections are generally
taken both as a design criterion and as a means to establish the
stiffness of the pipe. For example, the collapse load of a buried plastic conduit is measured at 5% vertical deflection relative to the diameter. Since the basic structural behavior of a
buried pipe is that of ring subjected to diametrical loads, ring
stiffness is one of the physical parameters used to describe the
nature of deformations. This stiffness is evaluated by a special
test called the Ring Bending test where the ring is compressed
under two parallel plates. The other material properties required to completely describe the physical nature of PVC are

the yield strength ay, yield strain sy , percentage elongation at

yield, initial modulus E 1 , and the Poisson's Ratio v.

This paper reports the laboratory tests conducted on PVC

pipes at the University of Houston to evaluate the elastic
parameters associated with the material. Four tension coupons
were tested till failure to determine the a-s relationships in
uniaxial tension. Two short pipes were tested under direct
compression to obtain the buckling load and compressive yield
capacity. Parallel plate ring bending tests were conducted
on two pipe rings to determine the ring stiffness of the pipes.
All tests were made on 200mm diameter pipes and of
thickness 3.56 and 5.33mm, in accordance with the ASTM
guidelines 1,2. Test data were collected and analyzed using a
HP 34970-A Data Acquisition System.

CONSTITUTIVE EQUATIONS : Non-Linear Behavior

Giroud 6 proposed a simple nonlinear stress-strain model for
PVC materials which is basically described by three
parameters: the yield stress 'cry', the yield strain `ey1 and a
dimensionless parameter 'n' which is greater than 1.
cr = cry [ 1 ( 1 -sky)n I

Eqn.(1) is nonlinear for all values of n > 1 and becomes

a linear for n = 1.

Research Assistant, Dept. of Civil Engrg., University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-4291.
is Structural Engineer, 2929 SW Freeway #259 Houston, Texas 77098 USA. (To whom all editorial correspondence must be addressed.)
JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING VOL. 29 NO. 2. JULYSEPT. 2002

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