Pure Bending Behavior of Pipe Reinforced by Steel Wires (PSP)

Plastic pipe reinforced by helically cross-winding steel wire (PSP) is a composite pipe, which is being applied into the offshore oil and gas industry. However, PSPs are often subjected to bending loading during the reeling process and offshore installations, which may lead to elliptical buckling due to the Brazier effect. Thus the ovalization instability of PSP under pure bending was investigated in this paper. According to the nonlinear ring theory, the ovalization growth of cross section during bending was studied. Then, the formulation was developed based on the principle of virtual work and was efficiently solved by Newton-Raphson method. Besides, a simplified method was proposed to simulate the behavior of steel wire reinforced layer. To verify the accuracy of the theoretical method, an ABAQUS model was employed to simulate the buckling response of PSP under pure bending. The results obtained from the theoretical method were compared with ABAQUS simulation results, and they show excellent agreements. The results can be used for predicting PSP’s bending behavior in offshore engineering applications.