Reliability Analysis of Corroded Pipelines Under External Pressure

This paper aims at assessing the reliability of pipelines with corrosion defects subjected to external pressure. Several design methods that explicitly account for the effect of corrosion damages on the collapse pressure of pipelines are considered. In particular, semi-empirical design equations derived from small-scale experiments and three-dimensional non-linear finite element analyses and design code methods currently used in practice are adopted. First, the design methods are analyzed and their predictions compared and then used to formulate the reliability problem of corroded pipelines subjected to external pressure. The reliability analysis adopts the state-of-the art stochastic models to characterize the uncertainty on the main parameters influencing the structural safety of corroded subsea pipelines. Parametric and sensitivity analyses are then performed for different levels of corrosion damages to identify the influence of the various parameters on the collapse probability of corroded pipelines under external pressure.