Structural response of the spiral-welded pipelines buried in different uniform soil types to the strike-slip fault

Abstract

Buried steel pipelines, which are widely used in, often face the threat of Permanent Ground Deformations (PGD) caused by fault crossings. The structural response of the pipeline can be influenced by the pipe-trench-backfill interaction, resulting in various hoop strains, axial plastic strains, and consequently, formation of wrinkles at different locations in the fault zone. This paper investigates the structural response of spiral-welded pipelines at strike-slip fault crossings by incorporating the burial effects in a range of different soil materials. A dynamic explicit analysis is used to address the convergence issue commonly encountered in the analysis of post-buckling problems. The helix angles and the burial depth effects in different soil types and pipeline-ground interaction angles are examined. The study provides valuable insights into the influence of burial conditions and corresponding helix angle on the performance of spiral-welded pipelines in strike-slip faults.

Keywords

• Spiral-welded pipeline
• Trenching-backfilling
• Nonlinear dynamic analysis
• Strike-slip fault