Safety Analysis of a Crossing Fault Buried Gas Pipeline by Numerical Simulation

The gas pipeline is a kind of linear project, which inevitably crosses complex geological conditions such as fault. Therefore, pipeline safety evaluation under the action of fault is very important for pipeline construction. This paper focuses on Hancheng Coal Bed Methane (CBM) pipeline project. Numerical simulation is conducted for the safety analysis of a crossing fault buried pipeline based on ANSYS finite element analysis software. The finite element analysis model for soil-pipeline interaction is generated by retrieving the engineering geological survey data. Some influencing factors are considered during calculation. Those factors include material nonlinearity of pipe and soil media, pipeline geometry parameters, fault type, broken bandwidth, fault occurrence and depth. According to calculation results, the influence of fault activity on the pipeline safety is analyzed and the corresponding countermeasures of disaster prevention and mitigation are put forward.