Plastic Collapse Assessment Procedure in P-M Diagram Method for Pipe Bends With a Local Thin Area Under Combined Pressure and Out-of-Plane Bending Moment

Pipe bends are common elements in piping system such as power or process piping, and local thinning are typically occurred on pipe bends due to erosion or corrosion. Therefore, it is important to establish the plastic collapse condition for pipe bends having a local thin area (LTA) under combined internal pressure and external bending moment. In this paper, a simplified plastic collapse assessment procedure in p-M (internal pressure ratio and external bending moment ratio) diagram method for pipe bends with a local thin area simultaneously subjected to internal pressure, p, and external out-of-plane bending moment, M, due to earthquake, etc., is proposed, which is derived from the reference stress. In this paper, only cases of that an LTA is located in the crown of pipe bends are considered. The plastic collapse loads derived from the p-M diagram method are compared with the results of both experiments and FEA for pipe bends of the same size with various configurations of an LTA.