Safety of buried steel pipelines under ground-induced deformations (GIPIPE) : final report

GIPIPE combines geotechnical engineering concepts with mechanical and pipeline engineering practice, towards developing design guidelines/ recommendations for safeguarding the structural integrity of buried welded steel pipelines under severe ground-induced actions. Permanent ground-induced actions are considered (fault motion, landslides, liquefaction-induced lateral spreading). The guidelines improve and extend current design practice, considering steel pipeline particularities and emphasizing on soil-pipe interaction. The following intermediate targets have been achieved: Critical evaluation of current design practice and pipeline incidents, towards identifying specific needs for developing pipeline novel design methodologies against geohazards (WP1) ; development of rigorous three-dimensional models for analysing buried pipelines under permanent ground actions (faults, landslides, liquefaction) with emphasis on soil material modelling (WP2) ; preparation of experimental set-up, acquisition of pipe specimens, material testing (WP3) ; performance of large-scale and small-scale experiments, with the purpose of examining soil-pipe interaction (WP4) ; extensive parametric analyses of buried pipelines under ground-induced actions (fault action, landslides, lateral spreading, settlements) (WP5) ; proposal of calibrated methodologies for simple and efficient stress analysis of buried pipelines for design purposes (WP6) ; presentation of guidelines for buried pipeline design against permanent ground-induced actions, summarizing existing knowledge and incorporating all results (WP6) ; dissemination of the results through a dedicated workshop (WP6). The GIPIPE results and deliverables are both novel and unique, resulting in development and validation of rigorous and simplified models, capable at describing large permanent deformations of buried pipelines, better understanding of soil-pipe interaction under severe ground-induced actions, significant improvement of pipeline design state-of-the-art in geohazard areas.