Optimization of Pipe Repair Sleeve Design

For the repair of pipeline defects, repair sleeves are the most widely used method in petro-chemical industry. The objective of this work was to optimize the thickness of non-pressure containing repair sleeve, by refining the existing design practice. Laboratory studies involving instrumentation of small-scaled repair sleeve system coupled with finite element analysis were carried out to refine the design procedure and optimize the thickness of the sleeve. Using a unified approach for finite element modeling, including failure pressure estimation and simulation of sleeve installation pressure, twenty-four cases ranging from 6–60 inches nominal diameter were investigated. In this paper, the details of the optimization approach used in this investigation have been presented.</jats:p