Reliability Analysis of Pipelines During Laying, Considering Ultimate Strength Under Combined Loads

Abstract

Structural reliability methods are applied to establish a measure of safety for pipelines during laying, and especially to calibrate semi-probabilistic ultimate limit state criteria based on measures of uncertainty, method of reliability, and a given target level. Ultimate collapse of thick tubes under combined external pressure, tension, and bending loads are studied applying the finite element method. Nonlinear effects of large deformations, effects of initial ovality, residual stresses, strain-hardening, yield anisotropy, and loading paths were accounted for in the analysis. A set of interaction equations is proposed. Load effects in the pipelines during installation by the S-lay method are studied. The effects of uncertainties in yield stress, mass, stiffness of the stinger, response amplitude operator and peak period for the wave spectrum were accounted for in the analysis. The major factors affecting strain concentration due to concrete coating are taken into account. A combination of design point calculation and importance sampling procedure is used to calculate the probability of failure. The study includes calibration of partial safety factors for the design format selected. The most important random variable is the model uncertainty for bending capacity, while the uncertainty of the load effect has minor importance for the probability of failure. The system effect is taken into account considering the correlation along the pipeline. The probability of failure is referred both to the total laying period as well as a 3-h period demonstrating that the target level needs to be defined in view of the reference time period. [S0892-7219(00)01501-6]