Failure Analysis Of Buried Gas Pipelines Crossing Seismic Faults

Abstract

Research on buried gas pipelines (BGPs) has taken an important consideration due to their failures in recent earthquakes. In permanent ground deformation (PGD) hazards, seismic faults are considered as one of the major causes of BGPs failure due to accumulation of impermissible tensile strains. In current research, four steel pipes such as X-42, X-52, X-60, and X-70 grades crossing through strike-slip, normal and reverse seismic faults have been investigated. Firstly, failure of BGPs due to change in soil-pipe parameters have been analyzed. Later, effects of seismic fault parameters such as change in dip angle and angle between pipe and fault plane are evaluated. Additionally, effects due to changing pipe class levels are also examined. The results of current study reveal that BGPs can resist until earthquake moment magnitude of 7.0 but fails above this limit under the assumed geotechnical properties of current study. In addition, strike-slip fault can trigger early damage in BGPs than normal and reverse faults. In the last stage, an early warning system is proposed based on the current procedure.