Downslope Pipeline Walking and Soil Variables

Commonly used analytical solutions for pipeline walking assessment consider a rigid-plastic pipe-soil interaction model, which is a drastic idealization of the real pipe-soil interaction. This leads to inaccurate walking predictions overestimating the walking rate per loading cycle. This thesis shows how analytical solutions can be adapted for any real pipe-soil interaction model by adopting a more realistic soil behaviour. It also explores how variable slopes can be accounted for in the traditional solutions, so that, any real circumstance (either geotechnical or geographical) is satisfactorily assessed using such solutions.