Failure Bending Moment for Pipes With an Arbitrary-Shaped Circumferential Flaw

When a flaw is detected in a stainless steel piping system, an evaluation has to be performed to determine its suitability for continued operation. The failure bending moment of the flawed pipe can be predicted by limit load criterion in accordance with Appendix E-8 in the JSME S NA-1-2008 and/or Appendix C in the ASME Code Section XI. However, in these current codes, the limit load criterion is only calculated for the case of pipes containing a single flaw with constant depth, although the actual flaw depth is variable along the circumferential direction. Particularly, geometrical shapes of stress corrosion cracks are generally complex. The objective of this paper is to propose a method by formula for predicting the load-carrying capacity of pipes containing a circumferential surface flaw with any arbitrary shape. The failure bending moment is obtained by dividing the surface flaw into several subflaw segments. Using this method, good agreement is observed between the numerical solution and the reported experimental results. Several numerical examples are also presented to show the validity of the proposed methodology. Finally, it is demonstrated that three subflaw segments are sufficient to determine the collapse bending moment of a semi-elliptical surface flaw using the proposed methodology.