Numerical Modeling of Buried Pipeline Crossing a Fault

Pipelines are common transportation means for oil and natural gas, which act as an important lifeline facility for any nation. Often the design of these pipelines is a difficult task because they commonly are installed underground passing through different types of soil media. Many of these existing pipelines run through the faulted area, which continuously exposed to considerable risk of failure due to movement along the fault. In this paper, a numerical study is carried out to understand stress development in buried pipeline subjected to fault motion with Mundra-Delhi pipeline as a case study. For this purpose, a 3D finite element program is developed and the same is used to study stress development in the pipe subjected to fault motion. Also here study has been done to find out the effect of different soil media and effect of fault-pipeline angle for both strike slip and dip slip fault motion