On the collapse of thick-walled pipes with corrosion defects under external pressure

Corrosion defect is considered to be one of the major critical damages of subsea pipelines, which can result in a considerable loss in the collapse capacity of thick-walled pipes in deep waters. In this paper, collapse experiments on 13 small-scale seamless steel tubes with varying sizes of elliptical and rectangular corrosion defects were carried out in a sealed hyperbaric chamber. The collapse pressure and deformed configurations were obtained, with four types of collapse trajectories identified. A numerical framework was established to simulate the collapse event using ABAQUS, and decent consistency of the collapse pressure and collapsed configurations was observed between numerical and experimental results. Then, the collapse pressure of thick-walled pipes with a single elliptical corrosion defect was studied parametrically, covering different defect sizes, geometric characteristics, and material properties. Based on the extensive numerical analysis, a reasonable empirical formula was developed to estimate the collapse pressure of thick-walled steel pipes with various elliptical corrosion defects and material properties.