Influence of Internal Pressure on the Impact Behavior of Steel Pipelines

Abstract

This article presents some experimental data recorded from 54 impact tests on pressurized mild steel pipes. The pipes were fully clamped across a span which was ten times the outside pipe diameter of 60 mm. The pipes had a wall thickness of 1.70 mm and were impacted laterally by a rigid wedge indenter at the mid-span and one-quarter-span positions. The impact velocities ranged up to 13.6 m/s and caused large inelastic indentations for the lower values and at higher values a loss of integrity which could occur underneath the indenter and/or at an end support. The critical values for the two failure energies were obtained for a range of internal gas pressures.