Accepted Manuscript

Effect of internal pressure and shape imperfections on plastic loads of pipe bends
under in-plane closing moment
T. Christo Michael, A.R. Veerappan, S. Shanmugam
PII: S0013-7944(13)00156-2
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2013.03.031
Reference: EFM 4034
To appear in: Engineering Fracture Mechanics
Received Date: 28 March 2012
Revised Date: 6 February 2013
Accepted Date: 31 March 2013
Please cite this article as: Christo Michael, T., Veerappan, A.R., Shanmugam, S., Effect of internal pressure and
shape imperfections on plastic loads of pipe bends under in-plane closing moment, Engineering Fracture
Mechanics (2013), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2013.03.031
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1

Effect of internal pressure and shape imperfections on plastic loads of pipe
bends under in-plane closing moment
T. Christo Michael AR. Veerappan* S. Shanmugam
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli 620
015, Tamilnadu, INDIA.

*
Corresponding author Ph. (0431) 2503416. Fax (0431) 2500133. email: aveer@nitt.edu
Abstract
The influence of internal pressure and shape imperfections of pipe bends on collapse load was
investigated under in-plane closing bending moment using finite element limit analysis based on
elastic-perfectly plastic material considering geometric nonlinearity. Twice-elastic-slope method
was used to obtain the collapse load. For each model, at a certain internal pressure, the collapse
moment was found to be the same for the pipe bends with oval and circular cross sections, at any
other pressure the effect of ovality is significant. The thinning produces negligible effect on
collapse load. Closed-form solutions are proposed to determine the collapse moment of pipe
bend.
Key words: Collapse load; Finite element limit analysis; Ovality; Pipe bend; Thinning.
1. Introduction
Pipe bends are critical components in piping systems. Due to their increased flexibility in
comparison to straight pipes, they allow a reduction of the reaction forces and moments within
the system as a whole by virtue of their elastic deformations. When exposed beyond elastic limit,
though pipe bends are capable of plasticizing over large areas when a system is overstressed,

2

care must be taken to ensure that the collapse load is avoided, the loads above which large
increases in deformation occur with small increases in load.
Numerous papers can be found in the literature, including analytical [1-3], experimental [4-13]
and numerical [14-24] works in the determination of plastic loads of pipe bends or elbows under
in-plane bending moment with or without internal fluid pressure. Various researchers have
investigated the plastic loads of pipe bends with different types of induced cracks [25-28].
All the above mentioned works considered the cross section of the pipe bend to be circular with
uniform wall thickness to determine the plastic loads. In reality, the pipe bends exist with shape
imperfections namely ovality and thinning as the outcome of the bending processes [29, 30] and
the acceptance of the pipe bends is based on these shape imperfections [31]. The design of
bending process tries to limit these imperfections being present in pipe bends [32, 33]. Dan [34]
carried out linear and nonlinear cyclic analysis on pipe bends with circular cross section and
cross section with 8% ovality and compared the finite element (FE) results. Kim et al. [35]
provided a method to estimate plastic loads for elbows with non-uniform wall thicknesses using
FE limit analysis. Pipe bends and elbows in nuclear piping systems are subjected to various
degradation mechanisms. Carbon steel pipe bends and elbows degrade greatly due to local wall
thinning from flow-accelerated corrosion. Local wall thinning in piping components reduces the
failure pressure, load-carrying capacity, deformation ability, and fatigue resistance of the piping
system [36]. Therefore, the effect of local wall thinning on the collapse behavior of pipe elbows
and bends have been investigated by several researchers [37-39].
The objective of the present work is to investigate the effect of internal pressure and ovality and
thinning of pipe bends on collapse loads (using twice-elastic-slope method) under in-plane

3

closing bending moment using FE limit analysis based on elastic-perfectly plastic material with
large geometric change option.
2. Ovality, thinning and thickening
The ovality, thickening at intrados and thinning at extrados are shown schematically in Fig. 1
and are defined as follows:
The degree of ovality is determined by the difference between the major and minor diameters
divided by the nominal diameter of the pipe. When expressed in percentage form as in Eq. (1), it
corresponds to percentage ovality [29-32, 34].
max min
0
( )
100
D D
C
D

= (1)
where
max min
2
D D
D
+
=
Thinning [29-31, 33], which occurs at extrados of the pipe bend, is defined as the ratio of the
difference between the nominal thickness and the minimum thickness to the nominal thickness of
the pipe bend and is expressed in percentage as given in Eq. (2).
min
t
( )
100
t t
C
t

= (2)
Thickening [29-31, 33] occurs at intrados and is defined as the difference between the maximum
thickness and the nominal thickness divided by the nominal thickness of the pipe bend. The
percentage thickening is given in Eq. (3).
max
th
( )
100
t t
C
t

= (3)
3. Plastic loads
The moment-rotation curves of a typical pipe bend model considering linear and non-linear
geometry are shown in Fig. 2. When geometric non-linearity is considered, the plastic loads

4

namely collapse and instability or maximum collapse loads are obtained from the moment-
rotation curves. Plastic collapse load or moment is obtained from moment-rotation curves using
twice-elastic-slope (TES) method [16] in which a straight line from the origin equal to twice the
elastic slope of the moment-rotation curve is drawn to intersect the same curve. Plastic instability
load is defined as the maximum point in the moment-rotation curves [14]. When the limit
analysis considers geometric linearity, the limit moment is defined as the maximum point in the
moment-rotation curve as the curve approaches horizontal asymptote [18]. Different equations
proposed by various researchers to determine plastic loads of pipe bends subject to in-plane
closing moment with or without internal pressure are listed below:
3.1. In-plane bending
The limit moment of straight pipe [17] is expressed as,
s 2
0 0
4 M r to = (4)
Equations (5)-(11) are normalized with limit moment of straight pipe. Based on small
displacement analysis, Spence and Findlay [1] and Calladine [2] expressed the lower-bound in-
plane limit moments given in Eqs. (5) and (6) respectively.
0.6
s
0
0.8
L
M
h
M
= (h < 1.45) (5)
2/ 3
s
0
0.935
L
M
h
M
= (h < 0.5) (6)
Based on FE results, Kim and Oh [17] modified the limit moments given in Eqs. (5) and (6) with
an additional dependence of r/t.
s
0
( )
n L
M
A h k
M
= + (0.1 h 0.5) (7)

5

with
0.0772
0.6453
r
A
t
| |
=
|
\ .
,
0.6755
1.5398
r
k
t

| |
=
|
\ .
and
0.0601
0.5157
r
n
t
| |
=
|
\ .

M
L
in the above equations is the limit moment of pipe bend under in-plane bending moment.
The analytical collapse moment given by Goodall [3] based on large displacement analysis is
2/ 3
0
s
0
1.04
1
M h
M |
=
+
(h < 0.5) (8)
where
2 2/ 3
0
4 3(1 ) )
2
h r
E t
v o
|
| |
| | (3
= + |
|
|
3 t
\ .
\ .
, M
0
is the collapse in-plane moment, E is the
Youngs modulus and is the Poissons ratio.
Based on the experimental study Touboul et al. [12] proposed the following collapse moment
equation for elbows.
2/ 3 0
s
0
0.715
M
h
M
= (9)
Equations (10) and (11) were proposed by Chattopadhyay et al. [15] and Kim and Oh [18]
respectively, based on finite element limit analyses considering geometric nonlinearity as
2/ 3 0
s
0
1.075
M
h
M
= (0.24 h 0.6) (10)
0
s
0
( )
c
n
C C
M
A h k
M
= + (0.1 h 0.5) (11)
with
0.017
0.800
C
r
A
t

| |
=
|
\ .
;
0.911
1.460
C
r
k
t

| |
=
|
\ .
;
0.127
0.423
C
r
n
t
| |
=
|
\ .

3.2. Combined in-plane bending and internal pressure
The first analytical solution for elbows with h < 0.5 under combined in-plane bending and
internal pressure loading based on small displacement analysis was proposed by Goodall [3] as

6

( )
1/ 3
2/ 3 2
0
0
1.04 1
2
P
L
P r
M h D t
t
o
o
| |
=
|
\ .

(h < 0.5)

(12)
M
L
P
is the limit moment under combined loading. The internal pressure, P, in the above equation
reduces the value of the limit load since the stiffening effect of internal pressure was not
considered in the small displacement analysis.
Kim and Oh [17] modified Eq. (12) based on the FE results and proposed the following solution
3 3
s
0 0
1 /
1 1
1 /(2 )
P
L
L
M r R P P
M r R P P
( | |
= =
| (

\ .
(0.1 h 0.5) (13)
M
L
is taken from Eq. (7). The values of P/P
0
were kept between 0 and 1, where P
0
is the
theoretical limit pressure of the pipe bend (based on the von Mises yield condition) and is given
by [17]
s
0 0 0
2 1 / 1 /
1 /(2 ) 1 /(2 ) 3
t r R r R
P P
r r R r R
o
( ( | |
= =
| ( (

\ .
(14)
The closed-form solution based on large displacement analysis using finite element method was
proposed by Chattopadyay [26], for p (=Pr/
0
t) ranging from 0 to 1 and r/t ranging from 5 to 20,
as
| |
1.418
2/ 3 12.129
0.223
0
2.071
1.075 8.41 1
s
M p
h p p
M h
(
= + +
(


(0.1 h 0.6)

(15)

Equation (16) was developed by Kim and Oh [18] based on large displacement analysis and is
normalized with, M
0
, the

collapse moment of pipe bend under in-plane closing bending as
2 3
0
1
M
p p p
M
o + | = + + (16)
where M
0
is taken from Eq. (11),

7

0
P r
p
t o
= , 0.18 0.07
r
t
o
| |
= +
|
\ .
,
3 2
0.0005 0.0075 0.0375 0.05
r r r
t t t
|
| | | | | |
= +
| | |
\ . \ . \ .

and

2
0.011 0.110 0.880
r r
t t

| | | |
= +
| |
\ . \ .

for r/t=5 and 10.
3 2
135 202.5 101.25 14.575 for 0.3 0.5
1.22 for 0.1 0.3
h h h h
h
o
+ s s
=

s s

2
105 105 23.75 for 0.3 0.5
1.70 for 0.1 0.3
h h h
h
|
+ s s
=

s s

2
75 75 18.83 for 0.3 0.5
3.08 for 0.1 0.3
h h h
h

+ s s
=

s s

for r/t=20.
4. Finite Element Limit Analyses
The FE modeling and the limit analysis were carried out using a general nonlinear finite element
package [40].
4.1. Geometry
The piping system considered for the analysis comprises a 90 bend and two attached equal
length straight pipes of L=5D [34]. The straight pipe attachment removes the end effects caused
by the boundary conditions to the pipe bend. The geometric parameters chosen for the study is
shown in Table 1. The diameter and the thicknesses of pipe are taken from ASME [41]. Three
bend radii [29] are selected to have wide range of bend characteristic, h, which is defined as
2
/
/
Rt R r
h
r r t
= = , where R is the bend radius of the pipe bend, r is the mean radius and t is the
thickness of the pipe. The geometry of the pipe bend includes ovality and thinning each varied

8

from 0% to 20% in increments of 5% [29-31] while the cross section of the straight pipe is
circular with uniform thickness for all the models. The pipe bend with circular cross section and
uniform thickness is taken as the reference model. Other models are considered as irregular
models.
The cross section with ovality and variable wall thicknesses (thinning/thickening) at the bend
section (center of the bend) and the cross section at straight pipe are shown schematically in Fig.
3 and the modeling procedure is explained as follows. The assumptions made in the geometry of
the pipe bends are,
- The cross section of the bend that includes ovality is perfectly elliptic [29-31, 34].
- The increase in thickness at intrados (thickening) is equal to the decrease in thickness at
extrados (thinning) (C
t
=C
th
) [29-31].
- The required ovality and thickness variation is given at the bend section and it is assumed
to vary linearly moving away from the bend section. At the two ends of the pipe bend
where the pipe bend is connected to straight pipes, the cross sections become circular and
the thicknesses become the nominal thickness of the straight pipe/pipe bend [34].
When ovality and thinning/thickening are included in the pipe bend, the cross section can be
explained as follows:
o
(1 ) a r K =
o
(1 ) b r K = +
ie
(1 ) (1 ) a r K t N =
ii
(1 ) (1 ) a r K t N = +
(1 )
i
b r K t = +

where K= C
0
/200 and N=C
t
/100. C
0
and C
t
are the percent ovality and thinning respectively.


9

The equation of ellipse is
2 2
2 2
1
x y
a b
+ =
From the above equation,
o o
cos x a u =
o o
sin y b u =
cos
i i
x a u =
sin
i i
y b u =
Let a
ie
and a
ii
be given as
o
cos
1
cos
i
a a t N
u
u
| |
=
|
\ .

where is the angle measured at the center anticlockwise from the minor axis as shown in Fig. 3.
The thickness of the pipe at the bend section (mid section) with respect to can be expressed as

2 2 2 2
o o
( )
i i
t x y x y u = + +
Substituting x
o
, y
o
, x
i
and y
i
in the above equation and upon solving,
| |
2
2
2 2 2 2
cos
( ) (1 2 cos2 ) (1 ) 1 cos (1 ) sin
cos
t r K K r K t N r K t
u
u u u u
u
( | |
= + + +
( |
(
\ .

The value of at extrados, crown and intrados are 0, /2 and respectively. The first term on the
right hand side of the above equation represents the co-ordinates of the outer ellipse which is
denoted as r
o
() while the second corresponds to the co-ordinates of inner ellipse and is denoted
by r
i
().
The variation of the outer and inner radii from the bend section to the end sections where the
cross section becomes circular is assumed to be linear and is explained as,

10

| |
o
o o
2 ( )
( ) ( ) (for - )
2 2
r r
r r
u | |
u
|

= + s s
| | 2 ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) (for - )
2 2
i
i i
r r t
r r
u | |
u
|

= + s s
where | is the angle of the bend and varies in the longitudinal direction as shown in Fig. 3.
For any particular , r
o
() and r
i
() gives the co-ordinates of the outer and inner ellipse
respectively, corresponding to a particular . For instance, when = 2 / | , for any , r
o
() = r
and r
i
() = r-t. Thickness at any , at a particular , can be obtained by r
o
() r
i
().
4.2. Finite element analysis
The material model was assumed to be elastic-perfectly plastic, and non-hardening J
2
flow
theory was used. The material used was Type 304 stainless steel with Youngs modulus, yield
stress and Poissons ratio respectively as 193 GPa, 272 MPa and 0.26 [14]. The C3D20R, 20-
node quadratic brick, reduced integration element was preferred in order to reduce the computing
time. One half of the model which is symmetric about the longitudinal axis, as shown in Fig. 4a,
was built and the symmetry boundary condition was applied. All possible degrees of freedom
(DOF) at one end of the straight pipe was constrained, as shown in Fig. 4b, and multi-point
constraint (MPC) was applied to the other end in which the end surface nodes were attached to a
single node where rotation boundary condition was specified. Increments of rotation were
prescribed at the free end rather than increments of moment since it is anticipated that the
collapse will be unstable [14]. Internal pressure was applied at the inner surface of the models as
distributed load together with an axial tension equivalent to the internal pressure at the end of the
pipe to simulate closed end. The Riks option within the package was invoked to avoid problems
associated with convergence in elastic-perfectly plastic calculations. Mapped meshing was used
to generate the mesh model. A mesh convergence study was performed to check the adequacy of

11

the mesh. Initially, the number of elements was reasonably chosen as 1848 with 14 elements
along the circumference, 14 elements in the bend portion of the pipe along the axis, 15 elements
in each straight pipe along the axis, and 3 elements across the thickness. The number of elements
was increased by varying the elements along the circumference and at the bend portion and the
total number of elements being 2208, 3000, 3888, 4872, and 5400. The collapse moment results
were obtained for the thicknesses of 3.18 mm and 11.13 mm, the bend radius being 101.6 mm
and 304.8 mm respectively. The loading cases considered were in-plane bending and combined
bending and an internal pressure of 5 MPa. For both the loading cases, the variation in the results
was within 1% when the elements were increased beyond 3000. Hence all the models were
meshed with 3000 elements and the number of nodes for each model was 15777. Three such
elements were used across the thickness for all the models.
The present finite element analysis considers both material and geometric nonlinearities. The
input files were created separately for each model and submitted for solving the models. The
reaction moments corresponding to the specified rotations at the MPC node were extracted
directly in excel sheets. Using the moment and rotation data the curves were plotted. When
nonlinear geometry effect is considered, the moment-rotation curves do not approach horizontal
asymptote to obtain clear limiting loads as shown in Fig. 2. Therefore, TES method was used to
determine the plastic loads from FE moment-rotation curves. The maximum or instability loads
were reported as plastic collapse loads, for the models, as the instability point occurs before the
TES point [24, 27].
5. Validation of FE modeling and analysis
To confirm the reliability of the present finite element limit analysis, the collapse moment results
were verified with the published collapse moment solutions of pipe bends under combined in-

12

plane bending and internal pressure loading. Kim and co-workers [42] compared the published
experimental plastic collapse loads for 90 elbows with existing closed-form solutions of ASME
BPVC Section III [43], ductile fracture handbook by Zahoor [44], Chattopadhyay and co-
workers [15, 25-26] and Kim and co-workers [17-22] and concluded that the solutions given by
Kim and co-workers [17-22] provide the least conservative estimates of plastic collapse loads,
although they give slightly non-conservative estimates for some data. Therefore, the results of
the present reference models were compared with the closed-form solution of Kim et al. [18]
given in Eq. (16). Also the results were compared with Eq. (15) [26].
The present collapse load results of reference models under moment and internal pressure
loading were compared with Eq. (16) which was developed separately for r/t=5 and 10 and for
r/t=20 with different values of , and for each case. Equation (15) is also developed for
various r/t values ranging from 5 to 20. The r/t values considered for the present study are 4.64,
6.18, 8.1, 9.78 and 17.47. The difference of collapse moment between r/t=5 and 4.64 when
substituted in Eq. (16) and (15) for various pressures ranging from 4 to 32 MPa is within 0.74
and 2.5 percent respectively. Similarly the difference in collapse moment between r/t=10 and
9.78 for the pressures ranging from 2 to 14 MPa is within 0.63 and 0.65 percent respectively.
Therefore, the finite element results of the present models with r/t=4.64 and 9.78 have been
compared with Eq. (16) and (15). The comparison of FE results and Eq. (16) showed good
agreement as shown in Fig. 5a with the average difference of 3.3% and the comparison with Eq.
(15) is shown in Fig. 5b which has an average difference of 14.7%. The present finite element
limit analysis procedure was thus validated.
6. Results and discussion

13

To study the effect of ovality and thinning, the reference and irregular models were compared by
calculating the percent difference between them using the following equation
0 0
0
100
Ref Igr
Ref
M M
Z
M

=
where Z is the percent difference, M
0
Ref
and M
0
Igr
are the collapse moments of the reference and
irregular models respectively.
6.1. Effect of thinning
The effect of thinning on collapse moment for a typical model is shown in Fig. 6 for 3.18 mm
thickness and 101.6 mm bend radius under combined pressure and moment loading. The effect
of thinning is minimal. Similar trend is observed for other models considered. For any particular
ovality and different thinning the maximum variation for the models considered with and without
internal pressure is within 2.1%. The thickness variation in the cross section of the pipe bend
may not be enough to produce significant variation in the collapse moment due to the presence of
thickening at intrados and thinning at extrados. Also the increase in thickness at intrados and
decrease in thickness at extrados is assumed to be equal in the analysis. Therefore, the variation
in the collapse moment is minimal. Existing collapse moment results for the same assumption in
the thickness variation reveals that the thinning effect is minimal [35].
6.2. Effect of internal pressure and ovality
The effect of internal pressure on collapse loads of pipe bends under combined loading
considering geometric nonlinearity, was studied by various researches [14, 15] and found that the
collapse load, for any model, increases first, reaches a maximum value and then decreases as the
internal pressure is increased. In the present study, the internal pressure, for each model, was
varied in such a way as to observe the effect of ovality on collapse load.

14

The pipe bend under in-plane bending closing moment (P=0) weakens the geometry due to the
ovalization of the cross section. The presence of ovality further weakens the pipe bends as the
collapse load is below the reference models for all the models considered. The positive percent
difference is maximum, as shown in Figs. 7-11, for all ovalities under moment load. When the
pipe bend is subjected to combined loading, the internal pressure counteracts against the
ovalization of the pipe cross section and tries to keep the cross section to be circular. This
stiffening effect also increases the collapse load [14, 15]. From Figs. 7-11, it is also observed that
under combined loading the collapse load decreases below the reference model due to the effect
of ovality for low pressures. As pressure increases, the effect of ovality reduces and for a
particular pressure, this effect is almost nullified as the percent difference for all ovality values is
approximately the same and is closer to zero. This particular pressure, in this paper, is termed as
nullifying pressure. Further increase in pressure increases the effect of ovality as the negative
percent difference increases, which reveal that the presence of ovality increases the stiffness of
the pipe bends for higher pressures. It is also observed from the Figs. 7-11 that for moment
loading, increase in ovality increases the percent difference for all the models considered. When
the pressure load is also applied, this trend continues up to the nullifying pressure beyond which
the increase in ovality produces a positive effect of increasing the collapse load.
When the thickness is 3.18 mm, for 101.6 mm bend radius, under moment load with no internal
pressure, the percent difference is 1.8, 4, 5.7 and 8.2 percent respectively for the ovality of 5, 10,
15 and 20 percent, as shown in Fig. 7a which indicate that the ovality weakens the geometry.
When the internal pressure is 1 MPa, the presence of ovality reduces the stiffening effect of the
internal pressure. The effect of ovality on collapse load reduces with increase in the internal
pressure and the nullifying pressure is 2 MPa. At nullifying pressure, the stiffness of the bend is

15

unaltered by ovality indicating that the nullifying pressure is sufficient to overcome the effect of
ovality and the bend behaves like the one with circular cross section. An important finding is that
the ovality increases the collapse load with pressures above nullifying pressure which signifies
that the presence of ovality increases the stiffness of the bend. This may be due to the effect of
internal pressure and its interaction with the geometry variation in the cross section of the pipe
bend. This positive effect is an advantage to the pipe bend and the maximum percent difference,
when the pressure is 7 MPa, is -3.2, -6, -8.2 and -10.1 percent respectively for the ovality of 5,
10, 15 and 20 percent. Similar trend is observed for other bend radii considered. For moment
load, the percent difference, for ovality of 5, 10, 15 and 20 percent are, respectively, 2.6, 5.1, 7.7
and 10.4 percent for the bend radius of 203.2 mm and 2.8, 5.6, 8.5 and 11.4 percent for bend the
radius 304.8 mm, as shown in Figs. 7b and c. For the maximum applied internal pressure of 5
MPa, the difference is -3.5, -6.4, -8.8 and -10.8 percent for bend radius 203.2 mm and -3.8, -7.8,
-10 and -12.1 percent for 304.8 mm bend radius, respectively.
The observations from Figs. 8-11, for other thicknesses with the chosen three bend radii, and the
associated physical meaning are similar to the thickness of 3.18 mm which has been discussed
above. The variation of nullifying pressure with increase in thickness and bend radii can be
observed in Table 2. Increase in thickness generally increases the nullifying pressure. For all
thicknesses except t=11.13 mm, an increase in bend radius decreases the nullifying pressure.
However, the nullifying pressure decreases first and then increases for t=11.13 mm. For a
particular thickness and bend radius, the collapse load increases first reaches a maximum and
starts decreasing as internal pressure is increased. This decrease of collapse load with increase of
internal pressure is attributed to the added hoop stress resulting from internal pressure which
weakens the cross section, and at a certain value of internal pressure the loss in cross section

16

stiffness due to the added hoop stress exceeds the gain in stiffness due to due to ovalisation
resisting; hence, the decrease in collapse moment at higher values of internal pressure [14]. Since
the pressure range chosen for the present study is to observe the effect of ovality on collapse
moment of the bends, for most of the cases considered, as shown in Figs. 12a-c, the pressure was
not varied until the collapse load reaches the maximum value and the subsequent decrease of
collapse load with further increase in pressure. But for few cases, as shown in Figs. 12c-e, the
collapse load reaches a maximum value and then decreases with increase in pressure. The
maximum collapse moment is reached for the cases having thickness t=6.35 mm with only
R=101.6 mm as shown in Fig. 12c and t=8.56 mm and t= 11.13 mm for all bend radii considered
as shown in Figs. 12d and e respectively. Hoop stress is attributed for the decrease of collapse
moment from the maximum value with increase in internal pressure. Therefore, the hoop stress
may be the reason for the variation of nullifying pressure for t=8.56 and 11.13 mm. The
nullifying pressure decreases as the bend radius is increased from 101.6 mm to 203.2 mm and
remains at 10 MPa, as given in Table 2. As the bend radius is further increased, this pressure
decreases first and then increases for t= 11.13 mm.
Figures 7-11 signify that, at and above the nullifying pressure, the presence of ovality improves
the performance of pipe bends and increase in ovality further improves the performance. Since
thinning also produces negligible effect, ovality and thinning limits for accepting/rejecting pipe
bends need not be emphasized at the nullifying pressure and beyond, leading to huge reduction in
rejection rate and rigorous manufacturing processes involved in pipe bends which will result in
large savings in cost and time.
6.3. Effect of thickness and bend radius

17

The collapse moments of reference models are given in Figs. 12a-e. From the figures, it is
observed that the collapse load increases with increase in thickness and bend radius. The same
trend is present for all the models with ovality.
7. Proposed collapse moment equations
The interaction of internal pressure and the geometric parameter of ovality in determining the
collapse load of pipe bend using TES method can be obtained from the proposed Eqs. (17) and
(18) given below. A commercial package [45] has been used to fit the results of collapse load for
pipe bends with various geometric parameters and for different pressures considered for each
model. To get a good fit, two equations are proposed, Eq. (17) for h ranging from 0.105 to 0.664
and Eq. (18) for h above 0.664.
( )
0.325
2.215
0.75
0 0
1 0.0035 7 (for 0.105 0.664)
(100 4 )
M R r
p h
M r C t

| |
= + + s s
`
|

\ .
)

(17)
( )
0.75
1.7
0.45
1.4
0 0
1 0.001 (for 0.664< 1.275)
(10 6 )
M R r
p h h
M r C t

| |
= + s
`
|
+
\ .
)

(18)
M
0
is the collapse moment of the pipe bend models considered with ovality under in-plane
bending closing moment [46]. The root mean square error (RMSE) is 2.8 and 1.54 percent for
the Eq. (17) and (18) respectively which reveals the fitness of the proposed equations. The error
and RMSE are defined as,
FE EQ
FE
Error ( )
M M
E
M

= (19)
1/ 2
2
1
RMSE /
n
i
i
E n
=
(
=
(

(20)
where M
FE
and M
EQ
are the collapse moments obtained from finite element limit analysis and the
proposed equations respectively.

18

The comparison of the finite element results and proposed collapse moment equations for typical
pipe bend models with 10% ovality is shown in Fig. 13a and b. The collapse load of pipe bends
given in Eqs. (17) and (18) under combined moment and pressure loading is the function of
geometric parameters namely pipe radius, pipe thickness, bend radius, and ovality, the internal
pressure and the yield stress of the material.
The proposed Eq. (17) is also compared with experimental collapse moment of Greenstreet [6].
The material properties, the internal pressure, and the geometry used for the experiment [6] are
given in Table 3. The collapse moment values obtained by experiment [6] and the Eq. (17) show
good agreement.
8. Conclusions
The effect of ovality and thinning on collapse loads of pipe bends under combined in-plane
closing bending and internal pressure was investigated using finite element limit analysis based
on elastic-perfectly material with the effect of large geometric change. Twice-elastic-slope
method was used to obtain collapse load from moment-rotation curves. The influence of internal
pressure and shape imperfections on collapse load was studied by varying internal pressure. The
conclusions drawn from the analyses are:
- The presence of thinning produces negligible effect on collapse load of pipe bends
considered. Hence, thinning need not be considered for the acceptance/rejection of pipe
bends.
- For each model, the presence of ovality reduces the collapse load below that of reference
model up to a certain pressure. Beyond this pressure, the collapse load of irregular
models become higher than reference models and this increase in collapse load is
attributed to the increase of bending stiffness.

19

- The nullifying pressure increases with increase in thickness. For all thicknesses except
11.13 mm, this nullifying pressure decreases as bend radius increases.
- Ovality limit for accepting/rejecting pipe bends need not be emphasized at the nullifying
pressure and beyond. Hence, rejection rate will be considerably reduced and the
manufacturing processes involved in pipe bends can be simplified resulting in large cost
and time savings.
- The collapse load increases with increasing thickness and bend radius.
- Based on the finite element results, closed-form solutions are proposed to determine
collapse moment of the pipe bends.
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20

plastic characteristics of piping products in relations to ASME Code Criteria, NUREG
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stress index equation for pipe bends under in-plane bending. Trans, SMiRT 19,
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23

Pressure Vessel Technol 2009;131:011207-17.
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Pressure Vessel Technol 2009;131:031201-18.
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[38]

Oh CS, Kim YJ, Park CY. Plastic loads of elbows with local wall thinning under in-
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24

Div. 1. American Society of Mechanical Engineers; 2000.
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moment. Engng Fract Mech 2012;79:138-48.

25

Figure Captions
Fig. 1. Elliptic cross section with thinning and thickening.
Fig. 2. Typical moment-end rotation curves for the model with t = 8.56 mm and R = 101.6
mm with and without internal pressure.
Fig. 3. Pipe bend geometry with attached straight pipe.
Fig. 4. Finite Element models (a) half symmetry and (b) with boundary and loading
conditions.
Fig. 5. Comparison of FE collapse moment with (a) Eq. (16) and (b) Eq. (15).
Fig. 6. Effect of thinning on normalized collapse load of a model (t=3.18 mm and R=101.6
mm).
Fig. 7. Percent difference in collapse load between reference and irregular models for the
model with t=3.18 mm.
Fig. 8. Percent difference in collapse load between reference and irregular models for the
model with t=5.56 mm.
Fig. 9. Percent difference in collapse load between reference and irregular models for the
model with t=6.35 mm.
Fig. 10. Percent difference in collapse load between reference and irregular models for the
model with t=8.56 mm.
Fig. 11. Percent difference in collapse load between reference and irregular models for the
model with t=11.13 mm.

26

Fig. 12. Collapse moments of reference models.
Fig. 13. Comparison of FE collapse moment with the proposed solutions for typical models
with C
0
=10%.

1

Nomenclature
C
0
percent ovality
C
t
percent thinning
C
th
percent thickening
D pipe outside (nominal) diameter, mm
D
max
maximum outside pipe diameter, mm
D
min
minimum outside pipe diameter, mm
E Youngs modulus
h bend characteristic
L length of straight pipe, mm
M

collapse moment under combined internal pressure and in-plane bending moment
M
L
limit in-plane moment of a pipe bend
M
0
collapse in-plane moment of a pipe bend
P
L
M
limit moment under combined internal pressure and in-plane bending moment
s
0
M

limit in-plane moment of a straight pipe
P internal pressure
s
0
P

Limit pressure of straight pipe
R bend radius to neutral axis, mm
r mean pipe radius
t nominal thickness of pipe bend (=t
c
), mm
t
max
maximum pipe thickness (=t
i
), mm
t
min
minimum pipe thickness (=t
e
), mm
Poissons ratio

2

0
limit/yield stress of an elastic-perfectly plastic material



27

Table 1. Pipe bend geometry parameters.
Outside
Diameter,
D (mm)
Nominal pipe
Thickness, t
(mm)
Mean
Radius,
r (mm)
r/t
h =Rt/r
2
R=101.6
mm
R=203.2
mm
R=304.8
mm
114.3
3.18 55.56 17.47 0.105 0.209 0.314
5.56 54.37 9.78 0.191 0.382 0.573
6.35 53.98 8.50 0.221 0.443 0.664
8.56 52.87 6.18 0.311 0.622 0.933
11.13 51.59 4.64 0.425 0.850 1.275

28

Table 2. Nullifying pressure for various thicknesses and bend radii.
Sl.
No.
t R
Nullifying
Pressure, MPa
1
3.18
101.6 2
2 203.2 between 1 and 2
3 304.8 between 1 and 2
4
5.56
101.6 between 6 and 8
5 203.2 between 4 and 6
6 304.8 4
7
6.35
101.6 8
8 203.2 6
9 304.8 between 4 and 6
10
8.56
101.6 15
11 203.2 10
12 304.8 10
13
11.13
101.6 between 20 and 24
14 203.2 18
15 304.8 20

29

Table 3. Comparison of experimental collapse moment with Eq. (17)
Material

0
,
MPa
E,
GPa
r,
mm
t,
mm
R,
mm
h
P,
MPa
M
0
,
kN-m
M, kN-m
Ref [6]
Eq.
(17)
ASTM A
106 Gr B
344.7 207.53 80.6 7.1 228.6 0.25 10.34 19.2 24.52 24.518



30



Fig. 1.
D
min
D
max
t
max
t
min
Intrados

Extrados


31



Fig. 2.
TES
Instability load
Geometric linear curve for P=0
Geometric nonlinear curve for P=4 MPa
Geometric nonlinear curve for P=0

32





Fig. 3.
a
0
a
0
a
ie
a
ii
b
0
b
i
t
c
t
i
t
e
t
D
R




33



(a)



(b)

Fig. 4.
All DOF
constrained
In-plane closing
bending

34


(a)


(b)
Fig. 5.


FE results for combined moment
and pressure loading
Eq. (16)
r/t = 9.8
r/t = 4.64
Eq. (15)

35




Fig. 6.

P = 0
P = 2 MPa
P = 4 MPa
P = 6 MPa
Percent thinning
Percent ovality
M/M
0
s

36



(a) R=101.6 mm (b) R=203.2 mm



(c) R=304.8 mm

Fig. 7.
C
0
=5%
C
0
=10%
C
0
=15%
C
0
=20%

37



(a) R=101.6 mm (b) R=203.2 mm



(c) R=304.8 mm

Fig. 8.
C
0
=5%
C
0
=10%
C
0
=15%
C
0
=20%

38



(a) R=101.6 mm (b) R=203.2 mm



(c) R=304.8 mm

Fig. 9.
C
0
=5%
C
0
=10%
C
0
=15%
C
0
=20%

39



(a) R=101.6 mm (b) R=203.2 mm



(c) R=304.8 mm

Fig. 10.
C
0
=5%
C
0
=10%
C
0
=15%
C
0
=20%

40



(a) R=101.6 mm (b) R=203.2 mm



(c) R=304.8 mm

Fig. 11.
C
0
=5%
C
0
=10%
C
0
=15%
C
0
=20%

41



(a) t=3.18 mm (b) t=5.56 mm



(c) t=6.35 mm (d) t=8.56 mm



(e) t=11.13 mm

Fig. 12.
R=101.6 mm
R=203.2 mm
R=304.8 mm

42



(a)



(b)

Fig. 13.


h=0.314
h=0.209
h=0.105
h=1.275
h=0.933
h=0.85
Equation (17)
Equation (18)

Highlights
The effect of internal pressure and shape imperfections on collapse load of pipe bends
was studied
Finite element limit analysis was performed on pipe bends under combined pressure
and moment
The thinning produces negligible effect on collapse load while ovality effect varies
with pressure
Beyond a certain internal pressure, presence of ovality improves the performance of
bends
Closed-form solutions are proposed to include ovality in the determination of collapse
moment