In today’s safety-sensitive time for the North American natural gas pipeline industry, a small measure of hope was raised Monday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a new tool to help detect pipeline problems before they arise. It involves the application of an existing MIT computer model that tests automobile components for crashworthiness.

MIT researchers in the university’s Impact and Crashworthiness Laboratory are using their computer simulation to predict how pipes may fracture in offshore drilling accidents. They have simulated the forces in the Gulf of Mexico that caused last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion. “Their findings show their model accurately predicted the location and propagation of cracks in the oil rig’s drill riser, or portion of pipe connecting the surface drilling platform to the seafloor,” according to an MIT spokesperson.

The researchers found that the model’s reconstruction closely resembled an image of the actual offshore pipeline fracture taken by a remotely operated vehicle shortly after the accident occurred last April. The researchers presented their findings at a recent international offshore engineering conference.

MIT’s Tomasz Wierzbicki, professor of applied mechanics, said the simulation could help oil and gas companies identify stronger and more flexible pipe materials that would minimize the impact of future large-scale accidents.

Car crash safety testing at the MIT lab provided a foundation for “fracture predictive technology.” It has been fine-tuned over the years by combining physical experiments with computer simulations to predict both the strength and behavior of materials under severe impacts “We’re looking at what would happen during a severe accident, and we’re trying to determine what should be the material that would not fail under those conditions,” Wierzbicki said. “For that, you need technology to predict the limits of a material’s behavior.

“The deeper you go in the ocean, two or three miles down, the stronger material you need to withstand the pressure. But stronger materials are more brittle and break more easily. Thus, there is a difficult problem for the offshore industry, and I think they can learn a lot from us.”

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