Effect of Shape Imperfections on Thin-Walled Pipe Bends under Out-Of-Plane Moment and Internal Pressure

Abstract

This paper quantifies the effect of ovality and thinning/thickening of thin-wall pipe bend modeled using the geometric parameters of r/t=15 and 20 and λ=0.1 to 0.3. For each model the ovality and thinning is varied from 5% to 20 % in steps of 5 % .The collapse loads were obtained from twice-elastic-slope method of pipe bends subjected to out-of-plane moment with and without internal pressure. Large displacement analysis was performed on elastic-perfectly plastic material using the nonlinear FE package of ABAQUS. The analyzed shows that the thinning effect is insignificant and ovality produce the significant effect of upto 27.7% decrease in collapse load for pipe bend subjected to combined moment and internal pressure.