24 Qiang Bai and Yong Bai

l
Bending loads.
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External impact loads.
Different loads induce different failure mechanisms; therefore, the following failure
criteria should be satisfied in the wall thickness design:
l
Burst.
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Collapse.
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Buckle.
Pipeline bursting occurs when, due to the internal pressure (differential pressure),
the tensile hoop stress in the pipe wall is higher than the yield stress and it reaches
the ultimate tensile strength of the material; the tensile failure happens at the
weakest location of the pipeline. The allowable stress design (ASD) principles
ensure that the stress in the pipeline never exceeds the yield stress. The design
practice of limiting the hoop stress for design against the differential pressure
and limiting the equivalent stress for design against combined loads has proven to
be very safe in general, except when external impact loads are critical to
the integrity of the pipeline. Nevertheless, this practice has been used by the
pipeline industry for decades with little change, despite significant improvements
and developments in the pipeline technology, see Sotberg and Bruschi [8] and
Verley et al. [9].
Considering the precise design and effective quality and operational control ach-
ieved by the modern industry and with the availability of new materials, the need to
rationalize the wall thickness sizing practice for a safe and cost-effective design has
been realized, see Jiao et al. [10]. Limit state design (LSD) specifies the failure
conditions of the pipeline. The ultimate strength of the material with a safety factor is
used for the design criteria. Limit state design enables the designer to account for the
low probability of worst conditions and determine the pipe design required to achieve
a satisfactory level of safety. These safety levels need to reflect a range of issues,
including economic, public relations, and environmental costs. The limit state design
for pipelines is detailed in Chapter 4.
New design codes also provide guidance on application of high strength and new
materials, as well as design of high pressure and high temperature pipelines.

Pipeline Design Codes

ASME B31 Codes
The early history of pipeline design codes started in 1926 with the initiation of the
B31 code for pressure piping [11, 12] followed by the well-known ASME codes
B31.8 for gas transmission [4] and distribution piping systems and B31.4 [3] for oil
transportation piping in the early 1950s. The main design principle in these two codes
is that the pipeline is assessed as a pressure vessel, by limiting the hoop stress to a
specific fraction of the yield stress.
A brief outline of the relative design codes is given next.