Failure Analysis of a Buried Pipeline Transporting Gas

Abstract

The purposes of this study are to present a general analysis for the failure of a buried steel pipeline and to apply the results to a case study. Energy methods and classical beam theory are employed to model the pipeline behavior under simultaneous tension and transverse loading, loadings that arise from pipeline undermining. The mathematical model is used to explain a case study in which a pipeline conveying natural gas to an apartment building was undermined by the collapse of an adjacent, unshored trench wall. The fact that the ground in the vicinity was water soaked from a broken water supply line exacerbated the sinking of the pipeline into the trench, a movement that broke the pipeline at a