Guy Pluvinage – författare

Pipes are of major importance for transport of liquids and gas mainly for water, natural gas and oil. The total length of gas pipes in the world is estimated at one million kilometres for gas transport (pipes with a diameter of 80 to 1000 mm). Pipelines remain the least expensive transcontinental mean of transport compared to rail-bound or terrestrial transport. It has become increasingly paramount to ensure the safe utilisation of such plant in order to prevent economical, social and ecological losses. From a technical point of view, pipelines are complicated three dimensional structures that include straight pipes, nozzles, pipe-bends, dissimilar welded joints, etc. In addition, their operating conditions can be quite severe, that is, internal pressure and cyclic loading (vibration) combined with the influence of internal and external corrosive environments. The external defects, e.g., corrosion defects, gouge, foreign object scratches, and pipeline erection activities are major failure reasons of gas pipelines. All these types of defects and associated failure are described.

Leak and fracture of pipes is assumed to be done by initiation and propagation of defect and final failure when defect has reached a critical length.

In this book, the three two major defect assessment tools for pipes are presented :

i) the failure assessment diagram and particularly the SINTAP procedure,

ii) limit analysis,

iii) strain design approach

Methods of defect repair are based on investigation findings. Methods such as welded sleeve, repair clamp composite sleeve, grinding, pipe replacement are described.

This book is a compilation of selected papers from the 2014 New Trends in Fatigue and Fracture (NT2F14) Conference, which was held in Belgrade, Serbia. This prestigious conference brought together delegates from around the globe to discuss how to characterize, predict and analyze the fatigue and fracture of engineering materials, components, and structures using theoretical, experimental, numerical and practical approaches.

It highlights some important new trends in fracture mechanics presented at the conference, such as:

•   two-parameter fracture mechanics, arising from the coupling of fracture toughness and stress constraints

•   high-performance steel for gas and oil transportation and production (pressure vessels and boilers)

•   safety and reliability of welded joints

This book includes 12 contributions from well-known international scientists and a special tribute dedicated to the scientific contributions of Stojan Sedmark, who passed away in 2014.

Structures that are essential for economy and security such as energy production, transportation and supply, water supply, buildings, are susceptible to failure, because of defects already present in the material, or created at fabrication, or appearing during service. Methods of assesment of the nocivity of these defects are needed, to predict the remaining service life and the eventual emergency of stopping service and repairing, if possible. To reach this objectives, this book presents the last methods derived from the classical linear, non-linear fracture mechanics concepts, including fatigue and notch fracture mechanics. Several examples of structures rehabilitations and repairing are given.

This book gathers the presentation made during the Advanced Research Workshop held in Portoroz (Slovenia) in October 2008, under the auspices of NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme. It is edited by Professor Guy Pluvinage from the University Paul Verlaine – Metz (France) and Professor Aleksandar Sedmak from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Both have a long and rich experience in analysis of theoretical and practical cases in safety and reliability of structures. Other contributors are all known as experts in the areas of fatigue, facture and reliability of structures.