PEER has published Report No. 2025/11, Fragility Analysis of Buried Pipelines Derived from Finite-Element Soil-Pipeline Interaction Analysis. The report was authored by Daniel Hutabarat(Keller North America Inc.), Chris Bain (GEI Consultants, Inc.), Jonathan D. Bray and Norman Abrahamson (University of California, Berkeley), Thomas D. O’Rourke (Cornell University), and Scott Lindvall (Lettis Consultants International).
Access the report and 2 page summary. Access the full listing of PEER reports.
This report is one of a series of reports documenting the methods and findings of a multi-year, multi-disciplinary project conducted by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC). The overall project is titled “Performance-based Earthquake Engineering Assessment Tool for Natural Gas Storage and Pipeline Systems” henceforth referred to as the “OpenSRA Project.”
The overall goal of the OpenSRA project is to create an open-source research-based seismic risk assessment tool for natural gas infrastructure that can be used by utility stakeholders to better understand state-wide risks, prioritize mitigation, plan new gas infrastructure, and help focus post-earthquake repair work.
The project team includes researchers from UC Berkeley, LBNL, UC San Diego, University of Nevada Reno, the NHERI SimCenter at UC Berkeley, and Slate Geotechnical Consultants and its subcontractors Lettis Consultants International (LCI) and Thomas O’Rourke. Focused research to advance the seismic risk assessment tool was conducted by Task Groups, each addressing a particular area of study and expertise, and collaborating with the other Task Groups.
The scope of this report is to describe the development of fragility curves developed for assessing the probability of pipeline leakage and rupture given a longitudinal pipe strain response estimated using an estimation model derived from a comprehensive finite-element soil-pipeline interaction analysis. The finite-element simulations cover a wide range of scenarios including different pipelines geometries & materials, buried in different soil strength, and subjected to strike-slip, normal-slip, reverse-slip, and oblique-slip permanent ground deformations. Distributions of the system parameters (i.e., soil and pipeline properties) were sampled to create realistic suites of soil-pipe systems and analyzed using Abaqus finite element program. The Abaqus models were validated using available laboratory test data.