Time-dependent reliability assessment for corroding pipelines based on imperfect inspection data

This paper presents a methodology to evaluate the time-dependent system reliability of pressurized pipelines containing multiple active metal-loss corrosion defects and subjected to at least one inline inspection (ILI). The methodology incorporates an inverse Gaussian process-based corrosion growth model, and separates three distinctive failure modes, namely small leak, large leak and rupture. The hierarchical Bayesian method and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation are employed to evaluate the model parameters based on data obtained from high-resolution inline inspections. An example involving an in-service gas pipeline is used to validate the developed corrosion growth model and illustrate the proposed methodology for the system reliability analysis. The impact of the growth model on the reliability of pipelines is investigated through the comparative analysis in the example. The proposed methodology will facilitate the application of reliability-based pipeline corrosion management programs. ; Non UBC ; Unreviewed ; This collection contains the proceedings of ICASP12, the 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering held in Vancouver, Canada on July 12-15, 2015. Abstracts were peer-reviewed and authors of accepted abstracts were invited to submit full papers. Also full papers were peer reviewed. The editor for this collection is Professor Terje Haukaas, Department of Civil Engineering, UBC Vancouver. ; Faculty ; Other