Buckling stability of steel strip reinforced thermoplastic pipe subjected to external pressure

Throughout this report, the collapse behaviors of steel strip reinforced thermoplastic pipe (SSRTP) subjected to external pressure are investigated experimentally and numerically. A hyperbaric chamber is utilized to conduct the full-scale laboratorial tests of SSRTP, and the commercial software ABAQUS is used to simulate its collapse behavior. The results obtained from the experiment and the simulations are in good coincidence with each other, which further prove the reliability and accuracy of the proposed finite element model. Also, a simplified estimation is presented to calculate the collapse pressure of SSRTP, which can be regarded as its lower limit value. In addition, a series of parametric studies were performed to investigate the influential factors on the collapse pressure of the pipe, such as the initial imperfection, the geometrical configurations, the friction coefficient between contact surfaces, etc. The relative results may be of interest to the manufacture factory engineers.