Reference stress based approach to predict failure strength of pipes with local wall thinning under combined loading

In the previous work carried out by the authors, a new method to estimate failure strength of a pipe with local wall thinning subject to either internal pressure or global bending has been proposed. The proposed method was based on the equivalent stress averaged over the minimum ligament in the locally wall thinned region, and the simple scheme to estimate the equivalent stress in the minimum ligament was proposed, based on the reference stress concept for creep stress analysis. This paper extends the new method to combined internal pressure and global bending. The proposed method is validated against FE results for various geometries of local wall thinning under combined loading. The effect of internal pressure is also investigated in the present study. Comparison of maximum moments, predicted according to the proposed method, with published full-scale pipe test data for locally wall thinned pipes under combined internal pressure and global bending, shows good agreement.