New report: Understanding how the deterioration of cast iron pipes evolves into leakage

UKWIR (UK Water Industry Research) has published a new report designed to help those responsible for the repair and replacement of mains water pipes to target their efforts as they attempt to meet leakage reduction commitments.

Targeted mains replacement and rehabilitation is an essential intervention that will enable the UK’s water industry to meet its leakage reduction commitments. Targeting the right pipes will reduce costs and disruption, but this requires the capability to accurately assess the condition of deteriorated pipes.

To make this type of assessment a thorough understanding of the mechanisms that cause pipes to develop leaks is needed but these mechanisms depend on the pipe material. Grey Cast Iron (GCI) pipes are known to have high failure rates and deteriorate in service.

To enable the condition of corroded GCI pipes to be accurately assessed, the influence of corrosion pit shape and fatigue load type on the fatigue strength and failure type of GCI pipes was investigated.

This project used novel destructive laboratory tests to investigate the fatigue cracking process, and the results of these tests were compared to different fatigue model predictions to assess the validity of the model. The report gives the results of these comparisons.

To access the report, please click here.