Application of Bayesian Networks to Integrity Management of Energy Pipelines

Abstract

Metal-loss corrosion and third-party damage (TPD) are the leading threats to the integrity of buried oil and natural gas pipelines. This thesis employs Bayesian networks (BNs) and non-parametric Bayesian networks (NPBNs) to deal with four issues with regard to the reliability-based management program of corrosion and TPD. The first study integrates the quantification of measurement errors of the ILI tools, corrosion growth modeling and reliability analysis in a single dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) model, and employs the parameter learning technique to learn the parameters of the DBN model from the ILI-reported and filed-measured corrosion depths. The second study develops the BN model to estimate the probability of a given pipeline being hit by third-party excavations by taking into account common preventative and protective measures. The parameter learning technique is employed to learn the parameters of the BN model from datasets that consist of individual cases of third-party activities. The ILIs are infeasible for a portion of buried pipelines due to various reasons, which are known as unpiggable pipelines. To assist with the corrosion assessment for the unpiggable pipelines, the third study develops a non-parametric Bayesian network (NPBN) model to predict the corrosion depth on buried pipelines using the pipeline age and local soil properties as the predictors. The last study develops an optimal sample size determination method for collecting samples to reduce the epistemic uncertainties in the probabilistic distributions of basic random variables in the reliability analysis of corroded pipelines

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