The arresting performance of integral buckle arrestor for sandwich pipe systems

Integral buckle arrestor, which consists of welded stiff rings, has proved to be very effective to arrest the propagating buckle and can be applied in sandwich pipe systems. This paper examines the propagating buckle experiments on small-scale sandwich pipes with integral arrestors under different interface bonding conditions. In addition, a numerical framework was developed to reproduce the phenomenon of buckling propagation and crossover under external pressure, and good consistency was observed between the measured and predicted results. Then, the crossover pressure was studied parametrically covering the interface bonding conditions, key material properties, as well as geometries. An empirical expression was established based upon extensive numerical analysis to predict the crossover pressure of integral arrestors for sandwich pipes. The analysis further demonstrated that its arresting performance can be reasonably evaluated with the established empirical expression and lower bound envelope line. •Experiments on reduced-scale sandwich pipes with integral buckle arrestor under external pressure.•Studies on the effect of interface bonding property, geometries as well as material properties on the crossover pressure.•Empirical formula and lower bound envelope line for the arresting efficiency of integral buckle arrestor for sandwich pipe.