Abstract
Abstract Corrosion damage is reported to be one of the leading causes of steel pipeline failure causing significant financial losses to operators and damage to the surrounding environment. As part of a rising confrontation to pipeline integrity management, researchers are continuously seeking better ways to assist on how to identify, assess, and prevent such incidents. Thus, there is a crucial need to establish a connection between assessment of pipeline condition and its structural stability. To achieve this, a three-dimensional finite element (FE) model is developed. The effects of geometry parameters such as defect thickness and spread angle are considered. Results show that thicker pipelines with corrosion groove perform better structurally than slender equivalents. The impact of corrosion damage is assessed to be significant on pipe stability with pipelines experiencing higher displacement and wall stresses with increasing defect depth and spread angle. A protective measure has been proposed using the buried pipes bedding system. The most critical spread angle is at 60 deg for unprotected pipe sections and 90 deg for bedded protected sections.
Highlights
Predicting structural failure in buried facilities is typically a complex task
The use of Winkler type soil models is shown to have significant limitations. This is because, the reaction of the springs are restricted in a way that displacement is in one direction and unable to account for the effect of loading direction
The deflection results from the proposed model show good agreement and behaviour with the corresponding design standards
Summary
Predicting structural failure in buried facilities is typically a complex task This is as a result of the unseen conditions and nonlinearity interacting behaviour between buried structure and its soil environment, which in countless cases are highly random [1]. Among these concealed facilities, flexible pipelines are crucial.
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