Abstract
Buried steel fuel pipelines are critical lifelines for the society and the economy, but are very vulnerable to earthquake-induced ground failure. Traversing seismic areas inevitably results to several pipe – fault crossings. Fault rupture forces a buried pipeline to undergo deformations that could be substantial and heavily endanger its integrity. Due to the grave consequences of a potential pipe failure, mitigating measures are commonly applied at pipe – fault crossings to reduce the effects of a potential fault activation. In this paper, a comparative review of several measures that are used in practice or have been proposed in the technical literature is presented. Numerical analyses are then carried out to compare the effectiveness of commonly used measures and to extract conclusions regarding their applicability. Results indicate that the most efficient among the evaluated measures are pipe placement within culverts and use of flexible joints. Trench backfilling with pumice is a moderately effective measure in terms of pipe protection, while steel grade upgrade, wall thickness increase and pipe wrapping with geotextile are found to be insufficient protection methods.
Highlights
Buried steel pipelines are the main onshore transportation means of oil and gas within a region and across borders; their contribution to the society and the economy is very significant
The protection of buried steel fuel pipelines subjected to seismic fault rupture has been reviewed
The mitigating measures commonly used in practice
Summary
Buried steel pipelines are the main onshore transportation means of oil and gas within a region and across borders; their contribution to the society and the economy is very significant. By introducing bellow-type flexible joints between adjacent pipe parts in the fault vicinity, deformations due to fault activation are absorbed as rotations at the joints, and the pipe steel segments remain barely undeformed and unstressed (Melissianos et al, 2016). By elevating sufficiently long part of the pipeline on the two sides of fault crossing above the ground, on appropriate supports, the pipe is no longer forced to follow ground movement during fault activation. The efficiency of this approach has been clearly demonstrated in case of the Trans-Alaska pipeline—Denali fault crossing (Honegger and Nyman, 2004). It has to be noted that a different design procedure (design in operable conditions and against accidental actions) has to be followed for the above-ground segment of the pipeline
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