Investigation on the Effects of Uncertainties in Construction Quality on the Bursting Capacity of Submarine Pipelines

Construction quality plays an important role in the integrity of submarine oil and gas pipelines during their lifetime. Quality of material and quality of construction contractors are two major contributors to the durability of the pipelines. The risk regarding quality of material and fabricators accuracy creates major concerns in durability of pipelines and has a significant impact on the optimized balance between CAPEX and OPEX in Risk-based integrity management of pipeline. In this study, the impacts of construction quality and corresponding uncertainties on the probability of failure of submarine pipelines are investigated in a reliability analysis using Monte Carlo Simulation. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to show the important parameters within the study. The results show construction quality (i.e. standard deviation) decreases to 1/3 from 1/2, the probability of failure highly reduces from 5.9e-2 to 7e-5. This indicates a high sensitivity of the probability of failure to structural uncertainty.