Vulnerability of Natural Gas Pipelines under Earthquake Effects

Abstract

Turkey is one of the most important countries in terms of natural gas consumption and transmission capacity. Turkey is an important transmission zone for international pipelines such as Baku–Ceyhan and Natural Gas Pipeline Project between Asia and Europe through Turkey (NABUCCO). This region also has very active and major fault lines. For this reason, the safety of natural gas networks and transmission pipelines subject to earthquake effects has become very important. In this paper, an area prone to earthquake-induced landslides in Istanbul has been studied to demonstrate the behavior of a natural gas pipeline network. This area is located near the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ), and an earthquake with a magnitude of approximately 7.5 is expected in Istanbul in the upcoming years. For this investigated region, seismic vulnerability of natural gas pipelines subject to permanent ground deformation and seismic-wave propagation effects have been investigated, and risks have been highlighted. Using elastic beam theory, a new approximation has been developed to calculate earthquake effects on buried continuous pipelines. Based on the new method, obtained results have been examined.