International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 76 (1999) 539542

Limit moment of local wall thinning in pipe under bending

Liang-hao Han a,*, Shu-yan He a, Ying-pei Wang b, Ceng-dian Liu b
a

CAD, Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, Peoples Republic of China
b
East-China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, Peoples Republic of China
Received 5 February 1999; accepted 15 February 1999

Abstract
In engineering practice, pipe containing local wall thinning may be subjected to bending load. The existence of local wall thinning on pipe
surface impairs the load-carrying capacity of pipe. In order to maintain the integrity of the pipe containing local wall thinning, it is very
important to develop a method to evaluate such a pipe with local wall thinning under bending. In this paper, the limit moment of local wall
thinning pipe under pure bending is computed employing 3D elasticplastic finite element analysis. The results show that the limit moment
of pipe is affected not only by the width of defect but also by the longitudinal length of defect. When the longitudinal length of defect
overpasses some critical value, the results from net-section collapse criterion (NSC) are in very reasonable agreement with the results from
finite element analysis. Therefore, the NSC formula can conservatively be used to assess the limit load-carrying capability of local wall
thinning pipe under bending. q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Limit moment; Local wall thinning; Pipe

Nomenclature

u
b
Ro
Ri
Rm
t
d
h
L
sf
P
M
M0

half angle of local wall thinning

half neutral angle
outer radius of pipe
inner radius of pipe
meaning radius of pipe
pipe wall thickness
depth of local wall thinning
(t 2 d)/t
longitudinal length of local wall thinning
flow stress
axial load
limit moment
limit moment of plain pipe

1. Introduction
Local wall thinning is a very common volume defect in
pipe and pressure vessel, which can result from corrosion
and mechanical damage. Local wall thinning impairs the
load-carrying capacity of pipe. Current researches on local
wall thinning mainly focus on pipe under internal pressure.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 86-10-6278-4809; fax: 1 86-10-62771150.
E-mail address: lhaohan@263.net (L.-H. Han)

These researches have led to the development of analytical

methods [1,2] for evaluating the remaining strength of pipe
with local wall thinning. Amongst these methods, the most
widely accepted method is ASME/B31.G [1], but it can only
be used to evaluate corroded pipe under pressure, it cannot
be used for evaluating pipe under bending and axial load.
However, in engineering practice, pipe especially oil and
gas transmission, can be subjected to bending and axial
loads. So it is very important to develop a method to evaluate the effect of local wall thinning on the integrity of the
pipe under bending and axial load.
In this article, the limit moment of local wall thinning
pipe is analyzed employing finite element method, the
results from finite element analysis are compared with the
results from net-section collapse (NSC) criterion [4,5].
2. Limit load analysis based on NSC criterion
Net-section collapse failure (NSC) criterion, proposed by
Kanninen et al. [4], has interpreted pipe leak and break loads
as indicating critical net-stresses at crack initiation and
maximum load. In a way similar to Kanninens, the NSC
criterion is used to analyze the failure of a pipe with local
wall thinning under bending by assuming a uniform bending-stress distribution in this article (Fig. 1). When the pipe
reaches collapse failure the net-section stress of structure
equals the flow stress sf .

0308-0161/99/$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0308-016 1(99)00031-9

540

L.-H. Han et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 76 (1999) 539542

Fig. 1. Geometry of outer surface local wall thinning.

For the sake of conservative estimation, local wall thinning is located such that the center of its projection on
diameter plane coincides with the plane of maximum bending moment. From the equilibrium of axial force and of
bending moments, the limit load of pipe with local wall
thinning was determined. For simplicity, one may assume
that pipe is a thin-walled cylinder, that is, t=R p 1; under
this assumption, one of the parameters, t=R, is eliminated
from the analysis. The limit moment is readily written as
follows:
u 1 b , p


p
1 2 hu
P
12
2
b
2
p
2 p R m t s0

M < 2s0 R2m t{2sinb 2 1 2 hsinu}

u 1 b . p


p
1 2 hu
P
2h 1
212
b<
p
2s0 pRm t
2h

M < 2s0 R2m t{2hsinb 1 1 2 hsinu}:

If P equals to 0, the limit moment under pure bending will

be obtained with Eqs. (1)(4) as follows:
u1b,p
1.0
d/t=0.1
0.9
d/t=0.2

M/M0

0.8

d/t=0.3

0.7

d/t=0.4

0.6

d/t=0.5

0.5

d/t=0.6

0.4

d/t=0.7

0.3

d/t=0.8

0.2

d/t=0.9

0.0
0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9



p
1 2 hu
12
2
p



12h
sinb 2
u
M<
2


1 2 h
sinu
< M0 sinb 2
2
4s0 R2m t

u 1 b . p


p
1 2 hu
2h 1
21
b<
2h
p


1 2 h
sinu
M < 4s0 R2m t hsinb 1
2


1 2 h
sinu :
M0 hsinb 1
2

When u 1 b , p, Eq. (5) is consistent with expression [3,6]

of limit moment for pipe containing surface crack. When
u 1 b $ p, there will be some difference between crack and
local wall thinning if it is assumed that the part of crack on
the compressive area may close and carry some compressive
stress, the expression of limit moment for crack is M
1=21 1 hsinhp=1 1 h: Fig. 2 shows the relationship
between limit moment and circumferential size of local wall
thinning based on NSC failure criterion. As shown in Fig. 2,
in the left of straight line u 1 b p, curves come from Eq.
(5); in the right of straight line, curves come from Eq. (6).

3. Finite element analysis

+ =

0.1

1.0

Fig. 2. Limit moment of pipe based on NSC criterion.

In order to evaluate the applicability of NSC criterion, the

limit moment of local wall thinning pipe is calculated with
elasticplastic finite element analysis. The results from
finite element analysis are compared with the results
based on NSC formulae.

L.-H. Han et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 76 (1999) 539542

541

0.5P

0.5P

Fig. 3. Finite element analysis model for pipe under pure bending.

3.1. Finite element modeling

3.2. Results

Three-dimensional models are developed to simulate the

behavior of pipes containing local wall thinning under pure
bending. A bending load is applied by four-point bending
model (Fig. 3). Considering the symmetry, only a quadrant
of pipe is required with appropriate symmetry boundary
conditions applied (Fig. 4). Half-length of pipe is 4 m to
avoid the effect of loading point; local wall thinning is
located in the center of pipe; the radius ratio Ro =Ri is 1.2.
All the finite element analyses are performed with EMRC/
NISA [7] program using 20-node iso-parameter element.
The mesh is selected as a result of a series of convergence
studies, the details of which are omitted for brevity. For
perfectly plastic material, the limit moment is defined as
the load giving the final convergent solution in the nonlinear procedure.
The material properties used in the analysis are: Youngs
modulus E 2 105 N/mm 2, flow stress sf 200 N/mm 2,
Poissons ratio n 0:3.

A longitudinal defect theoretically has no effect on the

limit moment for pipe with respect to a diametrical plane.
Experimentally there is a slight effect [3]. In order to investigate the effect of longitudinal thinning length to limit
moment, a comprehensive survey are made for the following combinations of geometric parameters: half of circumferential angle u=p 0:1; 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9,
1.0; relative thinning depth d=t 0:1; 0.2,
0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6,
p
0.7, 0.8, 0.9; relative thinning length L= Rm t 0; 0.1, 0.2,
0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0. The curves shown in Fig. 5
come from finite element analysis. Only some of the results
(u 0:2, u 0:5) are listed in this article for brevity, limit
moment is normalized with respect to the plain pipe collapse
moment (M0 4R2m tsf ), the plain pipe solution M0 can be
obtained from Eq. (2) if h 1.
The results shown in Fig. 5 indicate that when longitudinal thinning length is relatively short, the longitudinal thinning length has great effect on limit moment; when
longitudinal
thinning length overpasses some value (e.g.
p
L= Rm t 1:5), the variety of longitudinal thinning
length has no effect on limit moment.
The relationship between limit moment and size of local
wall thinning is shown in Fig. 6. The curves come from NSC
formulae (1) and (2) and the points come from finite element
analysis. When the effect of longitudinal thinning length is
neglected, the results from finite element analysis are in
quite reasonable agreement with results from NSC criterion.

4. Conclusions

Fig. 4. Finite element mesh.

The longitudinal thinning length theoretically has no

effect on limit moment of pipe under bending and tension
load. In practice, there is a little effect because of the
constraint of remaining material surrounding local wall
thinning. The results from finite element analysis indicate
that after the longitudinal
thinning length overpasses some
p
value (e.g. 1:5 Rm t), variation of longitudinal thinning
length will have no effect on limit moment of pipe under
bending.
The results from finite element analysis indicate that
when the longitudinal thinning length L is relatively short,

L.-H. Han et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 76 (1999) 539542
1.0

1
2

0.9

3
4

0.8
M/M0

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

5
6

7
8

0.7

0.6

d/t=0.1
d/t=0.2
d/t=0.3
d/t=0.4
d/t=0.5
d/t=0.6
d/t=0.7
d/t=0.8
d/t=0.9

0.5
0.4

M/M0

= 0.2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

2
3
4
5
6

7
8
9

d/t=0.1
d/t=0.2
d/t=0.3
d/t=0.4
d/t=0.5
d/t=0.6
d/t=0.7
d/t=0.8
d/t=0.9

d/t=0.1
d/t=0.2
d/t=0.3
d/t=0.4
d/t=0.5
d/t=0.6
d/t=0.7
d/t=0.8
d/t=0.9

2. NSC formulae can be conservatively used as a complement of ASME B31.G to evaluate pipe with local wall
thinning under bending.

References

L
Rmt

1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2 Curves from NSC formulae
0.1
0.0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
/

Fig. 6. Comparison between finite element analysis and NSC formulae

p
L= Rm t 2:0:

(b)

Rmt

(a)
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0

M/M0

542

= 0.5

Fig. 5. The effect of thinning length to limit moment.

the limit moment will increase with the decrease of L; when

L is more than some value, the results from finite element
analysis are consistent with results from NSC criterion. So
two conclusions can be made as follows:
1. Because NSC criterion does not consider the effect of
longitudinal thinning length, NSC criterion will give
conservative results to evaluate pipe with defect under
bending.

[1] ANI/ASME B31.G. Manual for Determining the Remaining Strength

of Corroded Pipelines, 1991.
[2] CAN/CSA-Z184-M86.Gas Pipeline System, Canadian Standards
Association, 1986.
[3] Miller AG. Review of limit loads of structure containing defects. Int. J.
Pressure. Vessel. and Piping 1988;32:197327.
[4] Kanninen MF, Broek D, Marschall CW, Rybicki EF, Sampath SG,
Simonen FA, Wilkowski GM. Mechanical fracture predictions for
sensitized stainless steel piping with circumferential cracks. Final
Report, EPRI NP-192, USA, 1976.
[5] Kanninen MF, Broek D, Hahn GT, Marschall CW, Rybicki EF, Wilkowski GM. Toward an elastic fracture mechanics predictive capability for reactor piping. Nuclear Engrg. Design 1978;48:117134.
[6] Schulze HD, Togler G, Bodmann E. Fracture mechanics analysis on the
initiation and propagation of circumferential and longitudinal defects
in straight pipes and pipe bend. Nuclear Engrg. Design 1980;58:1931.
[7] NISA, Engineering Mechanics Research Corporation, MI, USA, 1995.