One of the major challenges in the design of ultra high grade (X100) gas pipelines is the identification of areliable crack propagation strategy. Recent research results have shown that the newly developed highstrength and large diameter gas pipelines, when operated at severe conditions, may not be able to arrest arunning ductile crack through pipe material properties. Hence, the use of crack arrestors is required in thedesign of safe and reliable pipeline systems.A conventional crack arrestor can be a high toughness pipe insert, or a local joint with higher wall thickness.According to experimental results of full-scale burst tests, composite crack arrestors are one of the mostpromising technologies. Such crack arrestors are made of fibre reinforced plastics which provide the pipewith an additional hoop constraint. In this paper, numerical tools to simulate crack initiation, propagationand arrest in composite crack arrestors are introduced.First, the in-use behaviour of composite crack arrestors is evaluated by means of large scale tensile testsand four point bending experiments. The ability of different stress based orthotropic failure measures topredict the onset of material degradation is compared. Then, computational fracture mechanics is applied tosimulate ductile crack propagation in high pressure gas pipelines, and the corresponding crack growth inthe composite arrestor. The combination of numerical simulation and experimental research allows derivingdesign guidelines for composite crack arrestors.
Evaluation of ductile crack initiation limit using strain hardening exponent