`HDPE pipe fracture on Hudson River barge`

Holman's own consulting case. Thousands of feet of HDPE pipe fusion-welded on a barge and pulled under the Hudson; one fracture investigated. Used to introduce fusion-welded polymer pipe and the open question of century-scale durability.

I had a job a few years ago where they asked me to look at this style of HDPE pipe. It had fractured, and they wanted to know whether it was an issue with the pipe or something that happened during the production process. For that job, they had thousands of feet of this pipe out on a barge on the Hudson River, and they were actually fusing it and running it under the river in place. This is something you couldn't do out on a barge with metallic pipe. The flexibility is what allowed them to bore through the hole and tug this along behind. The reason they could do that is because the joint is a fusion-welded joint. They heat it up and press it together, and they fuse it. They continually feed this off the barge while they're pulling the pipe into the ground.