China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has constructed large-diameter high-strength pipelines (X70 and X80) in the past decades in areas of seismic activities, mine subsidence, and slope movement using strain-based design (SBD) technology. More pipelines being constructed now traverse regions of active seismic activities, mine subsidence, slope movement, and discontinuous permafrost. CNPC is also interested in moving to linepipe grades higher than X80. In view of the recent development of various tensile strain models, work was undertaken to evaluate those models and determine the most appropriate models for current and future applications.
In this paper, selected tensile strain models are reviewed and evaluated against an experimental database. The database of 80 tests from public-domain publications contains both full-scale pipe tests and curved wide plate tests with 46 tests from high strength pipes (X80 and above). The calculated tensile strain capacity from the selected models was compared with the test data. The models were evaluated and the applicability of the models to the linepipes of different strength levels was discussed.
