Abstract
During operation, a buried pipeline is threatened by a variety of geological hazards, particularly in permafrost regions, where freezing-thawing disasters have a significant influence on the integrity and safety of the buried pipelines. The topographical environmental conditions along the pipeline, as well as the influence of frost heave and thaw settlement on the pipeline’s foundation soil, must be considered in the design and construction stage. Theoretical analysis, numerical modeling, field testing, and mitigation measures on vital energy pipelines in permafrost have been widely documented, but no attempt has been made to review the freezing-thawing disasters, current research methodologies, and mitigation strategies. This article reviews the formation mechanisms and mitigation measures for frost hazards (e.g., differential frost heave, thaw settlement, slope instability, frost mounds, icing, river ice scouring, and pipeline floating) along buried pipelines in permafrost regions and summarizes and prospects the major progress in the research on mechanisms, analysis methods, model test, and field monitoring based on publications of studies of key energy pipelines in permafrost regions. This review will provide scholars with a basic understanding of the challenging freezing-thawing hazards encountered by energy pipelines in permafrost regions, as well as research on the stability and mitigation of pipeline foundation soils plagued by freezing-thawing hazards in permafrost regions under a warming climate and degrading permafrost environment.
Highlights
For over a century, the design, construction, and operation of buried energy pipelines have gone on without a break
This paper reviews the literature on energy pipelines in permafrost regions and the pertinent hydraulic, thermal, and mechanical properties of permafrost soils that affect the stability and operational safety of foundation soils of pipeline mechanics buried in permafrost regions during the last 10 to 15 years, and the geotechnical hazards of buried pipelines, the methods to study the interactions between the pipeline and foundation soil, and the mitigative measures for disasters are summarized and prospected
For buried pipelines in permafrost regions, the thermalhydro-mechanical (THM) interactions between the pipeline and the soil are the major causes of the instability of the foundation soils of buried pipelines
Summary
The design, construction, and operation of buried energy pipelines have gone on without a break. The oil flow is chilled to near ambient temperatures to prevent large disturbances from pipeline conduction and from convective heat transfer between the buried pipeline and the ambient permafrost soil. Because of the presence of discontinuous permafrost and dramatic changes in ambient temperature, it still caused ground frost heave or thaw settlement and other geological hazards [10]. The GLOP is a 1078 km long, 159 mm diameter pipeline that runs from Golmud, Qinghai Province, to Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, dubbed as the Golmud-Lhasa Oil Pipeline (GLOP) It is built in 1975-1977 in a conventional burial construction mode; about 900 km of the pipeline is at elevations of above 4000 m asl, with the highest point at the Fenghuo Mountain Pass at 5,228 m asl [13,14,15]. This paper reviews the literature on energy pipelines in permafrost regions and the pertinent hydraulic, thermal, and mechanical properties of permafrost soils that affect the stability and operational safety of foundation soils of pipeline mechanics buried in permafrost regions during the last 10 to 15 years, and the geotechnical hazards of buried pipelines, the methods to study the interactions between the pipeline and foundation soil, and the mitigative measures for disasters are summarized and prospected
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