Fully-Plastic Strain-Based J Estimation Scheme for Circumferential Surface Cracks in Pipes Subjected to Reeling

Modern installation techniques for marine pipelines and subsea risers are often based on the reel-lay method, which introduces significant (plastic) strains on the pipe during reeling and unreeling. The safe assessment of cracklike flaws under such conditions requires accurate estimations of the elastic-plastic crack driving forces, ideally expressed in a strain-based formulation to better account for the displacement controlled nature of the reeling method. This paper aims to facilitate such assessments by presenting a strain-based expression of the well-known Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimation scheme for the J integral, which is directly based upon fully plastic descriptions of fracture behavior under significant plasticity. Parametric finite element simulations of bending of circumferentially cracked pipes have been conducted for a set of crack geometries, pipe dimensions, and material hardening properties representative of current applications. These provide the numerical assessment of the crack driving force upon which the nondimensional factors of the EPRI methodology, which scale J with applied strain, are derived. Finally, these factors are presented in convenient graphical and tabular forms, thus allowing the direct and accurate assessment of the J integral for circumferentially cracked pipes subjected to reeling. Further results show that crack driving force values estimated using the proposed methodology and the given g₁ factors are in very close agreement to those obtained directly from the finite element simulations.