A Survey on Underground Pipelines and Railway Infrastructure at Cross-Sections

Underground pipelines are an essential part of the transportation infrastructure. The structural deterioration of pipelines crossing railways and their subsequent failures are critical for society and industry resulting in direct and indirect costs for all the related stakeholders. Pipeline failures are complex processes, which are affected by many factors, both static (e.g., pipe material, size, age, and soil type) and dynamic (e.g., traffic load, pressure zone changes, and environmental impacts). These failures have serious impacts on public due to safety, disruption of traffic, inconvenience to society, environmental impacts and shortage of resources. Therefore, continuous and accurate condition assessment is critical for the effective management and maintenance of pipeline networks within transportation infrastructure. The aim of this study is to identify failure modes and consequences related to the crossing of pipelines in railway corridors. Expert opinion have been collected through two set of questionnaires which have been distributed to the 291 municipalities in the whole Sweden. The failure analysis revealed that pipe deformation has higher impact followed by pipe rupture at cross-section with railway infrastructure. For underground pipeline under railway infrastructure, aging and external load gets higher ranks among different potential failure causes to the pipeline.ISBN för värdpublikation: 978-981-11-2724-3PipeXrai