A Novel Method to Assess Safety of Buried Pressure Pipelines under Non-Random Process Seismic Excitation based on Cloud Model

Abstract

It is necessary to conduct a safety assessment for pipelines which are regarded as important lifeline projects after an earthquake. Since the random process of loading in earthquake engineering requires a large amount of samples, this paper establishes a non-random vibration method based on convex model theory and applies it to small sample engineering. Moreover, a space–time analytical model of buried pipeline and a finite element model are established to solve the dynamic response of pipelines with non-random process seismic excitation. Furthermore, the randomness of the stress values of the pipeline subjected to earthquake and the fuzziness of the degree of damage to pipelines are considered. Therefore, a novel method for assessing damage to pipelines is proposed based on cloud model. The results indicate that an analysis of non-random vibration combined with the cloud inference method can solve the fuzziness and randomness of the quantitative description and qualitative concept conversion for damage evaluation of pipelines. The method is also an adaptive and effective assessment method for pipelines exposed to earthquake and is able to promote safety management of pipeline engineering.

Comprehensive Evaluation for Real-Time Compaction Quality Using i-AHP and i-GAM: Case Study of Earth-Rock Dam

“…Among these theories, the interval model, as a representative of the convex set model, is extensively used since it is easy to combine with on-site statistical data. The model can take the subjectivity and uncertainty into account by extending the deterministic numbers to bounded intervals [24]. Therefore, the mathematical model of AHP extended by the interval model (i-AHP) method is introduced for the evaluation of real-time compaction quality.…”