3.

1 GEOTECHNICAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES

An anchor or thrust block must be designed to transfer the thrust from the pipe ONLY into the
undisturbed native soil in the trench wall. On no account should the pipe embedment be relied upon
to resist any of the thrust. There are three main reasons for this: (1) It is generally impossible to
compact embedment material (or any other material) sufficiently densely against an anchor or
thrust block to eliminate any bedding-in movement. (Trials have shown that bedding-in movement
can easily be 5 mm or so, which may be half of the total permissible movement.) (2) It is possible
that the trench fill material will not have been placed when the pressure test is carried out. If so, the
pipe embedment material would have no surcharge load on it and therefore could not resist any
horizontal force. (3) The natural material is likely to have a much higher stiffness modulus than the
embedment material, and will therefore attract most of the thrust anyway.