Effect of distribution types of variables on reliability estimation of buried pipelines

This paper presents the effects of boundary conditions of failure pressure model for buried pipelines on failure prediction by using a failure probability model. The FORM (first order reliability method) is used in order to estimate the probability of failure in the buried pipelines with corrosion defects. This method estimates the failure probability of buried pipelines using the first order Taylor series expansion of the LSF(limit state function). The effects of varying distribution types of variables such as normal, lognormal and Weibull distributions on the failure probability of buried pipelines are systematically investigated using the FORM for the corrosion pipeline.