Reliability analysis of corroding pipelines by enhanced Monte Carlo simulation

• Consideration of multiple defects in corroding pipelines.
• Application of enhanced Monte Carlo simulation method is illustrated.
• Effect of number of defects on associated system failure probability is addressed.
• Effect of correlation between defects is quantified.

The present paper addresses reliability analysis of corroding pipelines considering also system reliability effects. The analysis is performed by utilization of enhanced Monte-Carlo simulation methods which have been found to be very efficient for quantification of system reliability in the case of multiple components with arbitrary correlation levels. The examples which are studied in the paper comprise systems with corrosion defects which are both independent and correlated.