Stress Crack Resistance of Recycled and Virgin HDPE Corrugated Pipe for Transportation Infrastructure Applications

As the use of recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) corrugated pipes is interested in road-drainage systems, their long-term properties need to be clarified. Recently, a research project was initiated at the University of Sherbrooke in collaboration with Quebec’s Ministry of Transportation (MTQ) to evaluate the durability of recycled and virgin HDPE pipes. The present study presents the stress crack resistance (SCR) part of the project. Notched specimens were cut from two corrugated HDPE pipe liners 900 mm in diameter for SCR tests. The SCR tests were performed in water at three different combinations of pressure/temperature of 650 psi/80 ℃, 450 psi/80 ℃, and 650 psi/70 ℃ according to FDOT FM5-573. Two extrapolation methods, Popelar’s Shift Method (PSM) and Rate Process Method (RPM), were used to generate a failure curve for each product. The results show that the RPM method is more reliable and is used to estimate 100 years of pipe lifetime. At service conditions of 10 ℃ and 500 psi, recycled pipes guarantee 100 years of service life as virgin pipes.