Proceedings of the Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.

Development of a Probabilistic Model Structure for Reliability Assessment of Pipeline Degradation Due to Corrosion-Fatigue Cracking

M. Chookah
University of Maryland, USA

M. Nuhi
University of Maryland, USA

M. Modarres
University of Maryland, USA

A. Seibi
The Petroleum Institute, UAE

Abstract
The overall objective of this study is to propose and validate a probabilistic-mechanistic empirical model based on the underlying corrosion-fatigue degradation phenomena whose parameters are estimated from the observed field data and experimental investigations. Uncertainties about the structure of the proposed model itself and parameters of the model are to be characterized. Because of its relatively simple form, the proposed empirical model will assess pipeline’s health and prognosis. The existing corrosionfatigue models are complicated to run, with many variables (over 30 parameters) whose values are deterministic and highly subjective.