Reliability estimation of buried gas pipelines in terms of various types of random variable distribution

Abstract

This paper presents the effects of corrosion environments of failure pressure model for buried pipelines on failure prediction by using a failure probability. The FORM (first order reliability method) is used in order to estimate the failure probability in the buried pipelines with corrosion defects. The effects of varying distribution types of random variables such as normal, lognormal and Weibull distributions on the failure probability of buried pipelines are systematically investigated. It is found that the failure probability for the MB31G model is larger than that for the B31G model. And the failure probability is estimated as the largest for the Weibull distribution and the smallest for the normal distribution. The effect of data scattering in corrosion environments on failure probability is also investigated and it is recognized that the scattering of wall thickness and yield strength of pipeline affects the failure probability significantly. The normalized margin is defined and estimated. Furthermore, the normalized margin is used to predict the failure probability using the fitting lines between failure probability and normalized margin.