Lateral Loading of Internally Pressurized Steel Pipes

This paper examines the denting response of pipes subjected to lateral (transverse) quasistatic wedge loading, in the presence of internal pressure. Pipes are modeled with nonlinear shell finite elements and a simplified analytical model. The analysis focuses on the significant influence of internal pressure on the denting resistance. Furthermore, the effects of wedge denting device orientation on the denting resistance are briefly discussed. Motivated by the experimental and numerical results, a two-dimensional heuristic model is proposed, which yields closed-form expressions for the denting force in terms of the corresponding displacement. The finite element results and the model equations are in good agreement with the experimental results and illustrate pipe denting response in an elegant manner.