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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L06553/01
Title: A FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTION MODEL FOR AVOIDING CATASTROPHIC FAILURE OF PRESSURISED PLASTICPIPE
Principal Investigator: Ivankovic, Professor A
Other Investigators:
Leevers, Dr P Issa, Dr R
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Afg Corporate Services Ltd British Gas
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 March 1997 Ends: 31 July 2000 Value (£): 246,631
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Materials Characterisation
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Manufacturing Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Most gas and water distribution pipe is now extruded from advanced, extremely tough grades of polyethylene. Nevertheless, these materials may under certain conditions be susceptible to 'Rapid Crack Propagation', whereby a crack initiated in a pipeline above a critical pressure continues to 'unzip' it for an indefinite distance. Incidents have been extremely rare, but avoiding them remains a high priority for gas and water utilities. Because full-scale tests are extremely expensive, new pipe system standards will specify a critical pressure using the small-scale 'S4' test, and an imminent European project will experimentally determine an S4-to-full-scale correlation. However, no existing computational model can reliably extend the range of such a correlation. The effect of varying 'backfill' (soil bedding) conditions is of particular concern, but the required tests are prohibitively expensive. Computationally, this problem, involving dynamic interaction of a non-linearly elastic pipe wall with contained fluid and quasi-fluid backfill, is extremely demanding. The proposal is to develop an efficient, unified finite-volume model, backed by an experimental study of backfill effects. The model will serve as a paradigm for a wider class of fluid-structure interaction problems, and for more general, interdisciplinary ('multi-physics') field problems.
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Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk