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FRACTURE MECHANICS TESTING OF HIGH DENSITY POLYETHYLENE (HDPE) PIPE MATERIAL WITH COMPACT TENSION (CT) SPECIMENS


ULMANU VLAD 1, DRĂGHICI GHEORGHE 1, ALUCHI VIRGIL 2
1. Universitatea Petrol-Gaze din PloieƟti, b-dul BucureƟti, 39, PloieƟti, Romania 2. GDF SUEZ ENERGY - DistrigazSud SRL, Cartier Albert, nr.956, Blejoi, Romania

Issue:

JESR, Number 3, Volume XVII

Section:

Issue No. 3 - Volume 17 (2011)

Abstract:

The lifetime of polyethylene pipes used for water and natural gas distribution is usually estimated based on relatively long-time creep tests. The pipes fail in service at room temperature and low stress in brittle mode called "long-time brittle failure". In order to economically predict the long term creep performance of HDPE pipes, short term static or fatigue tests are used, in which the crack growth rate is substantially increased. One of the recent tests capable of presenting results useful for HDPE pipe failure prediction is based on the concepts of fracture mechanics. The paper the tests performed on CT specimens cut directly from the HDPE gas pipe in order to determine the fracture toughness the crack propagation rate in fatigue and the crack propagation rate at different loading speeds. The crack propagation speed was monitored by video-controlled technique.

Keywords:

polyethylene pipes, crack growth rate, CT specimens, fracture toughness.

Code [ID]:

JESR201117V17S01A0014 [0003402]

Full paper:

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