The Effect of Three-Dimensional Earthquake P-Wave Propagational Speed on Buried Continues Straight Steel Pipelines

Abstract

The analysis and design of gas and oil pipelines is of importance given the fact that they are long and go through lands. They are laid besides the faults and sometimes cross the faults. Various studies have already investigated the design process and the damages imposed on the pipelines crossing the faults. The aim of this research is studying the effect of longitudinal wave propagation method on the amount of nonlinear strains of pipeline. In addition, it investigates the effect of wave propagation speed as well as the simplified hypothesis of the same effect of the wave on the pipeline. Many researchers study on modal analyses or two-dimensional analyses. In this paper used three-dimensional modeling with propagational P-wave. It should be mentioned that analyses carried out on both clayey and sandy soil with different propagational speed in each of them. The accuracy of the proposed analyses is validated by the comparison of the proposed solution results with some existing solutions.  According to the analyses, it became obvious that in dense soil the amounts of strain are less than soft soil. This amounts to 71 per cent in a sinusoidal wave. The average of the values of the reduced strain in different type of soil could reduce the amount of strain to be considered equal to 0.592 for clayey soils, and equal to 0.61 for sandy soil.