Modeling and simulating nonhomogeneous non-Gaussian corrosion fields on buried pipelines and its use in predicting burst capacities of corroded pipelines

Abstract

The present study proposes an iterative algorithm to simulate nonhomogeneous non-Gaussian corrosion fields on buried oil and gas pipeline's external surfaces. The algorithm incorporates the concepts of the discrete orthonormal S-transform and the iterative amplitude adjusted Fourier transform algorithm. This results in the space-wavenumber power spectral density function and marginal distribution function of the simulated corrosion field matching, respectively, their corresponding targets that could be determined from the high-resolution corrosion measurement data obtained from naturally corroded pipe segments. The simulation results demonstrate that the use of the proposed algorithm is able to capture the statistical characteristics of naturally occurring corrosion fields on pipelines. Three-dimensional elasto-plastic finite element analyses are carried out to evaluate the burst capacities of pipe segments containing simulated corrosion fields. Combined with finite element analyses, this algorithm can be employed to conduct virtual full-scale burst tests of corroded pipe specimens, which is of great value to the pipeline corrosion management practice.