Study on the propagating shear fracture in high strength line pipes by partial-gas burst test

Abstract

In this paper, for the purpose of investigation on quantitative correlation between the partial-gas burst tests and the full-scale burst tests as a first step of establishing the evaluating method of crack arrestability in pipelines from partial-gas burst test results, the effects of the differences in test conditions on crack propagation behavior between both tests were evaluated. The partial-gas burst tests using high strength X80 pipes were carried out six times with varied gas ratio and failure pressure. The test results indicated that the crack propagation is much influenced by not only the failure pressure but also the gas ratio. After evaluation of the differences between the partial-gas burst tests and the full-scale burst tests, the simulating method of the propagating shear fracture in partial-gas burst tests were proposed. The crack propagation of the partial-gas burst tests was well simulated by this method and good agreement between the experimental data and the simulated results was obtaine d.