Physics-based repair rate curves for segmented pipelines subject to seismic excitations

ABSTRACT

Current approaches to assess the reliability and resilience of water infrastructure subject to seismic hazard typically use Repair Rate (RR) curves for the linear elements (pipelines), which estimate the expected number of repairs needed per unit length after the occurrence of an earthquake of a given intensity. The available RR curves are characterized by high levels of uncertainty being based primarily on expert judgment and on limited data. Also, they provide no distinction between the damage on the segments and on the joints. This paper develops probabilistic physics-based RR curves to quantify the damage to segmented pipelines due to earthquakes. First, a mechanical model for segmented pipelines is proposed. The model is then used to generate a set of synthetic data for the calibration of the model parameters. We compare the proposed RR curves with the ones available in the literature and discuss the advantages of the proposed model.

KEYWORDS:

• Water network
• repair rate curves
• earthquake
• segmented pipelines

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this paper was supported in part by the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning funded by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Financial Assistance Award Number: 70NANB15H044). The views expressed are those of the authors and may not represent the official position of the sponsors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leandro Iannacone

Leandro Iannacone is a research assistant and PhD Candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering and his Master of Science in Structural Engineering from the Universita’ di Pisa, Italy. He also received a Master of Science in Applied Statistics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Iannacone’s research focuses on risk, reliability, resilience and life-cycle analysis of infrastructure systems, with emphasis on the modeling of deterioration mechanisms, infrastructure monitoring, and decision-making.

Paolo Gardoni

Paolo Gardoni is the Alfredo H. Ang Family Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the directorof the MAE Center which focuses on the creation of a Multi-hazard Approach to Engineering, and the associate director of the NIST funded Center of Excellence for Risk-based Community Resilience Planning. Gardoni is the founder of the journal Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure and the editor-in-chief of the journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety. He is internationally recognized for his work on sustainable and resilient infrastructure; reliability, risk and life cycle analysis; decision-making under uncertainty; earthquake engineering; performance assessment of deteriorating systems; ethical, social, and legal dimensions of risk; policies for natural hazard mitigation and disaster recovery; and engineering ethics.