Experimental and numerical analysis of dynamic rupture of steel pipes under internal high-speed moving pressures

•Dynamic rupture of gas pipes under internal high-speed moving pressures was investigated.•The effects of flexural waves on crack growth were experimentally shown and numerically analyzed.•The experimentation included the detonations of tiny explosive cords inside steel pipes.•The simulations included fluid–solid interaction and multi-material Lagrangian–Eulerian formulation.•A number of specific characteristics of detonation-driven fracture of tubes were identified.

This paper reports the experimentation and finite element analysis (FEA) of dynamic ductile rupture of steel pipes subjected to high-speed internal moving pressures. The experimentation included the detonations of tiny explosive cords inside small segments of ordinary gas pipes. A number of specific features of the detonation-driven fracture of cylindrical tubes such as; formation of special fracture surface markings due to cyclic crack growth, flap bulging, and crack curving/branching adjacent to the bulged area were identified. In the analysis part, the overall transient dynamic response of the pipe to detonation loading, the detonation-driven crack growth, the cyclic bulging of the crack flaps, and the resultant crack branching were simulated. The blast simulation was performed using a multi-material arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (MMALE) formulation. The fluid–structure interaction (FSI) was simulated using a coupling algorithm that treated the air as a static media and the pipe as a deformable Lagrangian mesh. The accuracy of the FEA results was verified using analytical solutions and data collected from the tested pipes. The experimentation and analysis clearly showed that the self-similar propagation of the initial axial cracks in the pipe was the incremental cyclic growth governed by the structural waves.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (346 K)Download as PowerPoint slide