Safety assessment of corrosion-defective natural gas pipeline under ground overload based on FEM

Abstract

Aiming at the safety problem of the pipeline containing corrosion defects caused by ground overload, a novel method is developed to assess the safety of buried pipelines with corrosion defects and predict the failure pressure. The effects of parameters including internal pressure, ground overload, length of the loading area, corrosion defect depth, buried depth and soil Young’s modulus, are discussed. Ground overload greatly increases the von Mises stress and strain at the corrosion defect location and decreases the internal pressure threshold. The von Mises stress and strain are an obvious nonlinear relationship with internal pressure. The high stress and strain area expand along the diagonal direction of the defect area. The local stress and strain concentration at the corrosion defect increases with the increase of ground overload, length of the loading area and corrosion defect depth, which reduces the failure pressure of the pipeline. Increasing the buried depth and soil Young’s modulus would effectively reduce local stress and strain concentration, and increase the failure pressure of the pipeline. The pipeline settlement displacement increases with the increase of internal pressure, ground overload, length of the loading area, and decreases with the increase of pipeline buried depth and soil Young’s modulus.