Fracture Mechanics and Lifetime Assessment of Polyethylene Pipes
Summary
Polyethylene pipes are widely employed in water supply, gas distribution and industrial applications owing to their corrosion resistance, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Their long-term performance is governed by the initiation and propagation of cracks under internal pressure, mechanical loads and environmental agents. Fracture mechanics offers a quantitative framework for characterising crack growth by means of stress intensity factors and crack growth rate laws. Long-term hydrostatic strength tests establish baseline lifetimes, while slow crack growth models project service performance by accounting for time-dependent subcritical crack propagation. Environmental stress cracking and temperature fluctuations act to reduce fracture toughness and accelerate damage. Advances in non-destructive evaluation, such as guided wave ultrasonics and portable indentation testing, enable early defect detection and in-situ integrity monitoring. Integrating mechanistic fracture models with probabilistic lifetime assessment supports predictive maintenance and integrity management, thereby ensuring the safety and reliability of global pipeline networks.
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Fracture Mechanics and Lifetime Assessment of Polyethylene Pipes publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in fracture mechanics and lifetime assessment of polyethylene pipes across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Fracture toughness: The critical stress intensity factor at which a crack propagates unstably in a material.
Stress intensity factor (K): A parameter describing the local stress field near a crack tip under load.
Slow crack growth (SCG): Time-dependent propagation of cracks under sustained stress, often influenced by environmental factors.
Environmental stress cracking (ESC): Brittle fracture initiated by the combined action of mechanical load and chemical exposure.
Long-term hydrostatic strength (LTHS): The ability of a pipe to withstand internal pressure over an extended period without failure.
References
- Guided Wave Ultrasonic Testing for Crack Detection in Polyethylene Pipes: Laboratory Experiments and Numerical Modeling. Sensors (2023).
- Failure Mode and the Prevention and Control Technology of Buried PE Pipeline in Service: State of the Art and Perspectives. Advances in Civil Engineering (2022).
- Method of the Mechanical Properties Evaluation of Polyethylene Gas Pipelines with Portable Hardness Testers. Inventions (2022).
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