Research on a model-based burst pressure prediction method for pipelines with corrosion defects

The leakage of pipelines will cause serious harm to the human living environment. To meet the safety assessment requirement for pipelines, a pipeline burst pressure prediction method based on a parametric model is proposed. The parameters of the model include defect size, pipeline size and material properties. First, the relationship between the defect size and the burst pressure was studied by finite element analysis, and the parametric model was deduced according to the analysis results. Second, the undetermined coefficients of the model were obtained using the improved genetic algorithm. Last, comparisons of the test burst pressures with those predicted by the proposed model and three standard assessment methods were carried out. The results show that the predicted model is more reliable than the existing pipeline assessment codes.