Predicting Crater Formation from Failure of Pressurized Water Mains through Analogy with Buried Explosive Events
Publication: Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice
Volume 11, Issue 2
Abstract
Brittle failure of a buried pressurized water pipe can result in rapid crater formation, causing debris to be thrown out over large distances as well as longer-term flooding and scour effects. Due to the potential for injury and property damage in a failure event, it is desirable to develop policies to enforce safe stand-off distances around high-risk pipes. Little published data are available on the formation of craters during the initial pressure release from a pipe burst, but an analogy can be made with buried explosives events, for which a large body of data exists. This paper uses finite-element modeling of buried pipe failures to assess the parameters affecting crater diameter, where pipe diameter, pressure, air content, and burial depth are shown to be significant. An explosive cratering tool is modified for use with water pipes by converting the energy release from a failing pipe to an equivalent mass of explosive. The modified tool reliably replicates the crater size from the modeling results, and accurately predicts the modeled crater size in new failure scenarios (), indicating the potential of the tool for use in developing policy on safe stand-off distances.
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Data Availability Statement
Keyword files and MATLAB scripts used for numerical modeling in LS-DYNA are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This work forms part of the Refinement of Safe Stand-off Distances Associated with Pressurised Water Mains project, funded by Scottish Water. The authors would particularly like to thank Ross O’Rourke of RPS Water for his contributions to this paper.
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Published In
Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice
Volume 11 • Issue 2 • May 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 23, 2019
Accepted: Nov 6, 2019
Published online: Mar 4, 2020
Published in print: May 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Aug 4, 2020
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