Seismic Safety Evaluation of the Pipelines Network

This paper aims at presenting a computational methodology for the seismic evaluation of steel pipelines networks, existing in the urban areas of Romania, characterized by an important seismic hazard. First, a short presentation of the state of the art of critical infrastructure composed of different classes of pipelines system, existing in urban areas, is given. In order to evaluate the seismic safety of existing urban piping network systems as well as different degrees of importance from a seismic design point of view, the paper presents a computational methodology based on Finite Element simulations. For the validation of the proposed methodology, a numerical case study has been performed, which aims to evaluate the seismic behavior of steel pipelines, as part of the network system existing in the North-Eastern region of Romania, characterized by a high seismic hazard. The numerical experiments based on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) methodology allows the evaluating of seismic safety of pipelines network, and can be further useful for monitoring critical infrastructure’s components exposed to strong earthquakes during their life-cycle.