Effect of Joint Configuration Design on the Butt Welding Characteristics of Double Wall PE Pipes

Abstract:

Underground PE double wall pipes have been supplying waste water to sewage disposal plant. Many processes have been introduced to join PE pipes, but most of these methods have lots of disadvantages such as costs, lack of reliability and difficulties in joining, etc. Recently butt welding has been paid much attention to joint PE pipes as this process has many advantages such as cost, safety and reliability. In this study, a newly developed heat plate, a patent-pending heat plate with a groove, was used to butt-weld PE double wall pipes with different misalignment gaps to simulate real underground conditions. The resulting joining characteristics of double wall pipes were compared with those from a conventional heat plate, in terms of stiffness, flattening and leakage tests. The results from the stiffness and flattening test showed that there were no big differences between the butt-welded joints made from these two plates. From the leakage test, although PE pipes welded with a conventional heat plate did leak below the required test conditions (10 min. at 0.75kgf/cm2), the pipes welded with a patent-pending grooved heat plate did not show any leakage even at a pressure 1.3 times higher than the required conditions. It was noted that by utilizing a grooved heat plate more complete fusion at the pipe joints could be obtained, which in turn induced a high quality joints.