April 2020, Vol. 247, No. 4

Features

Buried Pipe Failures Dependent on Soil Stiffness, Too

By Agostino Napolitano, Pipeline Department Manager, and Angelina Parlato, Onshore Pipeline Techical Manager, Saipem SpA Performance limits and potential failures must be identified for buried pipe design. Chief among those are excessive deformations of the pipe, wall buckling and collapse.    Figure 1: Pipe stiffness vs. D/t, assuming E = 2.1E+8 kPa Maximum allowable pipe deflection is usually not determined by structural failure but by conditions such as clearance for pipe-cleaning equipment, special sections and pipe appurtenances (attachments). Pipeline designers classify pipes as “flexible” or “rig

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