Abstract

Manholes are vertical shafts connecting underground sewers with street-level terminals.  They are covered by heavy lids.  During periods of heavy rainfall, the air column in the manhole may be compressed to such high level that the lid moves up.  Of course, this is a dangerous situation for pedestrians and road traffic.  Bolting the lid may provide a solution to the problem, but it is known that air pressurization underneath can result in structural damage.

A simple model is proposed to describe the lifting of the lid (manhole cover).  When the lid moves up, air is allowed to escape so that the lifting pressure decreases and the lid moves down, whereupon the air pressure increases again.  This repetition leads to the real phenomenon of the dancing manhole cover.  Since the model is strongly nonlinear, interesting dynamic behavior is expected and it is the latter that is the subject of this paper.

Note

This work is an extension of the following paper presented at the PVP-2019 conference:Tijsseling A.S., Vasconcelos J.G., Hou Q. & Bozkuş Z. 2019 Dancing manhole cover: a nonlinear spring-mass system. Proc. of the ASME 2019 Pressure Vessels and Piping Division Conf., San Antonio, USA, July 2019, Paper PVP2018-93086.


Venting Manhole Cover: A Nonlinear Spring-Mass System

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

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