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Quantification of Ground Shaking Effects on Buried Gas Transmission Pipelines

Description: 

Pipeline damage observed in past earthquakes that cannot be attributed to permanent ground displacement has typically been ascribed to strong ground shaking, particularly transient ground strains generated by the propagation of seismic energy on the ground surface. This study investigates the potential effects of transient ground shaking on damage to natural gas pipelines. Using a highly dense dataset of simulated ground motions, we assess both ground strain and the subsequent strain induced in buried pipelines over a range of simulated earthquake ground motions covering earthquake magnitudes of M6.5, M7.0 and M7.5. The ground motion dataset covers a 100km × 40km × 30km domain, with a fine grid spacing of 8 m and frequencies resolved up to 5 Hz. To account for pipeline orientation, we established a corresponding pipeline grid oriented in fault-parallel and fault-normal directions, then positioned pipelines along grid lines to capture pipe behavior at various locations within the seismic domain.

We developed a generic pipeline model for the dynamic analysis of buried pipeline subjected to multi-support excitation and analyzed 1,049 scenarios. The maximum and minimum longitudinal strains occurring anywhere along the pipeline were extracted at each time step and compared with the corresponding ground strains. New regression models are proposed to predict pipe strain using peak ground velocity and Joyner-Boore distance along the direction of the pipeline, and the results are compared with trendlines from the previous studies. The results indicate that, for the scenarios considered, seismic wave propagation–induced strains in both the ground and pipelines are generally small and unlikely to account for observed damage, suggesting that other mechanisms play a more significant role in pipeline failure.

Keywords ground shaking effects; transient ground strain; gas transmission pipeline; buried pipe damage;

Session: Earthquake Ground Motions and Structural Response: Emerging Tools and Applications - I

Type: Oral

Date: 4/16/2026

Presentation Time: 08:45 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Yi Peng

Student Presenter: No

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