Reliability Analysis of the Burst of Elastic/Plastic Tubes

The computational method presented in this paper provides an efficient solution to the reliability problem of burst of pipes with random geometric imperfections. The statistical characterization of the geometric imperfections is based on measured data from seamless pipes. Application of the Model-Correction-Factor Method (MCFM) proves that the burst pressure for a given pipe depends almost entirely on its minimum wall thickness. Thus, the burst reliability problem becomes one of determining the probability distribution of minimum wall thickness from the imperfection statistics. This problem is solved approximately by application of reliability theory and a novel homogenization technique. The accuracy of this method is verified through computationally inefficient Monte Carlo simulation for selected cases.