Fatigue crack growth investigation on offshore pipelines with three-dimensional interacting cracks

Due to high cost of full-scale experimental setup, this study presents a numerical model on fatigue behaviours of offshore pipeline with multiple coplanar cracks under cyclic tensile loadings. The validation on numerical results is made by other researchers' experimental results, and significant parameters affecting fatigue crack growth are studied. [Display omitted] •Fatigue investigation is performed on pipeline with multiple interacting cracks.•Extended finite element method (XFEM) is adopted for numerical simulations.•The fatigue results obtained are similar to those from experiments.•Surface crack growth rate is highly expedited as the interacting cracks propagate.•A user-friendly approach to fatigue life estimation of pipelines is provided.