Behaviour of reinforced thermoplastic pipe under combined bending and external pressure.

The buckling and collapse problems of reinforced thermoplastic pipe (RTP) caused by the combined bending and external pressures were investigated in this paper. Based on the model initially proposed by Kyriakides et al., a 2D theoretical model was developed which takes into account the transverse shear deformation, the mean radius change, the wall thickness change and the pre-buckling deformation. By means of numerical calculation, the predicted collapse envelopes of different loading paths are presented. Two kinds of failure modes during the loading paths were also experimented on. A 3D finite element model was established by ABAQUS to confirm the accuracy of the theoretical model. The compared results were proven to agree. The effects of different loading paths and the ratio of diameter to thickness were also discussed and useful conclusions were drawn for RTP's marine engineering application. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]