Ultimate fracture capacity of pressurised pipes with defects – Comparisons of large scale testing and numerical simulations

In this paper results from large scale 4-point bending tests of pipe-segments are compared with numerical analyses using LINKpipe. The experiments were carried out as a part of the joint industry project Fracture Control – Offshore Pipelines. The comparisons between large scale testing of pipelines and numerical analyses also address the effect of biaxial loading on the strain capacity. The defect is positioned on the tension side of the pipe when applying the load. A parametric study on changing the nominal wall thickness of the pipe is carried out. Due to variation in the yield stress, a parametric study to see the effect of this variation was also performed. The results demonstrate that ductile crack growth and biaxial loading are important elements in fracture assessment procedures for pipelines.