Probabilistic failure of a cracked submarine pipeline subjected to the underwater shock

Abstract

The failure of a cracked submarine pipeline subjected to the underwater explosion shock is probabilistically analyzed in this paper. A simple procedure is presented, in which the Monte Carlo method is used to estimate the bending stress distribution, and an analytical method is used to estimate the fracture failure probability. The results obtained from the present method are compared with those obtained from direct Monte Carlo simulations. Both are in good agreement. From the studies in this paper, it is concluded that the most dangerous case is that the crack is perpendicular to the tension stress. The influence of crack model uncertainty is significant. FOSM method is also used, which greatly under-estimates the failure probabilities for the problem studied in this paper.