Review of Oil and Gas Composite Piping System

Abstract

Continued increase in the use of vessels for storage, industrial processing, and power
generation under unusual conditions of pressure, temperature, and environment has given special
emphasis to analytical and environmental methods for determining their operating stresses.
Creeps, fracture, fatigue, explosion, vibration, expansion, buckling loads, etc constitute factors
known to cause some form of stresses and deformations or failure in composite material vessels
used in oil and gas industry. Good knowledge of the nature and magnitude of these stresses
enables provision of the adequate methods for their prevention and control. The study aimed at
modeling the wall thickness of an oil pipeline (pressurized cylindrical vessels) used in
transferring oil from one location to another. In doing so, a review of some published works on
such factors as creeps, fracture, fatigue failure, expansion, buckling loads, etc was also made. A
liquid flow problem was formulated and solved using a number of the existing design failure
theories used in the design of oil and gas piping systems. The solved problem shows vividly how
the wall thickness of an oil pipeline under fluid pressure can be determined and selected from
among the existing commercial standard pipe sizes. It is hoped that this work will answer some of
the questions asked by engineering students during lectures on theories and design of pressure
vessels.