Design of a four-point bend test for ultra-low cycle fatigue of pipelines under inelastic bending

This master thesis is situated in the research domain dealing with the ductile failure of pipelinesunder extreme loading conditions. It is part of an umbrella research aiming to develop innovativeexperimental and computational methodologies to simulate fracture of steel structural elements under ultralow cycle fatigue. The focus of this study is on steel pipeline applications. The objective of this thesis is todesign a large-scale four-point bend test setup to cyclically bend pipes. The feasibility of instrumentationwill be evaluated using small scale test specimens. In this paper some ideas, constraints and opportunitiesfor the design are considered, based on a literature review of several test setups for other applications. Thedesign parameters have been calculated to compose the design windows and an initial overview of thepossible instrumentation is given.