Upheaval and lateral buckling of submarine pipelines

摘要

The buckling of submarine pipelines on account of constrained thermal expansion is an important practical problem. Although the steel pipework remains for the most part within the elastic range, theoretical analysis is far from straightforward because the forces exerted by the soil onto the pipe as it moves are non-linear and irreversible. After a survey of the main relevant literature, attention is focused on the phenomenon of localisation of buckling; and a relatively simple analysis leads to an appropriate criterion. The importance of experiments is emphasised, and a new kind of small-scale model testing is introduced.