Fatigue failure of buckled pipelines

Abstract

Quite often, steel buried pipelines exhibit local buckles due to imposed deformations, which may cause failure because of fatigue from repeated loading. When such buckles are detected in a steel pipeline, a decision must be taken whether or not to repair the buckled pipeline section. The present paper describes the experimental and numerical work conducted to assess the condition and to estimate the safety level of a buckled water pipeline crossing a river near Rotterdam, The Netherlands.