Determination of the distance between the aqueduct roller supports in its pulling through the water barrier

Abstract

The aqueducts, mounted on roller bearings in the trigger path just before water obstacle, to determine the
distance between its supports, was regarded as the multispan beam under uniformly distributed load along its
length. To reach the beam redundancy, the three-moment equation was used, with the number of supports, ranging
from three to ten inclusive. The result revealed that the largest bending moment in such a beam with any number of
supports occurs on the second and penultimate supports. This bending moment was taken to calculate the maximum
distance between aqueduct supports. Besides, it turned out that the number of supports over seven, the largest
bending moment remains inchanged. Calculation of the maximum allowable distance between aqueduct supports
was performed for pipelines, with outer diameter of 529, 720, 820 and 1220 mm for different wall thickness. The
results showed that increasing the aqueduct pipeline wall thickness increases allowable distance between its supports.