Optimal Design of Onshore

Natural Gas Pipelines

Wenxing Zhou1
Assistant Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering,
University of Western Ontario,
London, ON, N6A 5B9, Canada
e-mail: wzhou@eng.uwo.ca

Maher A. Nessim
C-FER Technologies,
Edmonton, AB, T6N 1H2, Canada
e-mail: m.nessim@cfertech.com

The optimal design level for onshore natural gas pipelines was explored through a hypothetical example, whereby the pipe wall thickness was assumed to be the sole design
parameter. The probability distributions of the life-cycle costs of various candidate designs for the example pipeline were obtained using Monte-Carlo simulation. The lifecycle cost included the cost of failure due to equipment impact and external corrosion,
and the cost of periodic maintenance actions for external corrosion. The cost of failure
included both the cost of fatality and injury as well as the cost of property damage and
value of lost product. The minimum expected life-cycle cost criterion and stochastic
dominance rules were employed to determine the optimal design level. The allowable
societal risk level was considered as a constraint in the optimal design selection. It was
found that the Canadian Standard Association design leads to the minimum expected
life-cycle cost and satisfies the allowable societal risk constraint as well. A set of optimal
designs for a risk-averse decision maker was identified using the stochastic dominance
rules. Both the ASME and CSA designs belong to the optimal design set and meet the
allowable societal risk constraint. DOI: 10.1115/1.4002496
Keywords: optimal design, onshore gas pipeline, life-cycle cost, failure mode, failure
consequences, risk attitude

Introduction

Although transmission pipelines are widely recognized as the

safest means for mass transportation of hydrocarbons, incidents of
pipeline failures, defined as loss of pressure containment, do occur
albeit infrequently due to various hazards such as equipment
impact due to third-party interference, corrosion, and ground
movement. Failures of pipelines can lead to severe consequences,
including loss of human life, damage to both industry assets and
public property, and damage to the environment. For example, the
thermal radiation hazard resulting from an ignited rupture of a
high-pressure gas transmission pipeline can cause fatalities and
injuries, as well as significant property damage within an impact
radius as large as several hundred meters. Among many means to
increase the reliability of a new pipeline, increasing the pipe wall
thickness is conventionally the most commonly used measure. A
thicker pipe wall reduces the probability of failure and consequently, the potential cost of failure and cost of maintenance over
the pipelines service life but at the same time it leads to a higher
initial construction cost. Therefore, the design of a new pipeline
can be approached from a cost-benefit perspective by selecting an
optimal wall thickness to balance benefit and cost.
Optimal design of civil systems subjected to infrequent hazards
has attracted extensive research attention since the 1970s. Rosenblueth and Mendoza 1 formulated the optimal design based on a
reliability-based cost-benefit concept for structures that are either
abandoned or systematically rebuilt after failures. More recently,
the formulation in Ref. 1 was extended by a number of studies
considering more sophisticated time-variant reliability analysis
2, impact of maintenance 3, risk attitudes and societal risk
acceptance criteria 3,4, and multiple failure modes and failure
causes 3,5. The optimal design framework developed in these
studies was demonstrated for building structures; however, reports
of its application to energy pipeline systems were limited in public
literature. Zhou et al. 6 carried out reliability-based analyses of
1
Correspondence author.
Contributed by the Pressure Vessel and Piping Division of ASME for publication
in the JOURNAL OF PRESSURE VESSEL TECHNOLOGY. Manuscript received July 23, 2009;
final manuscript received August 17, 2010; published online April 6, 2011. Assoc.
Editor: Shawn Kenny.

Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

the life-cycle costs for two hypothetical examples of onshore gas

transmission pipelines. The life-cycle cost in their study consisted
of the initial construction cost and cost of corrosion maintenance
during the design life of the pipeline. The cost of failure, however,
was not calculated, although failure probabilities of the example
pipelines due to corrosion and equipment impact were evaluated.
A majority of the aforementioned work is based on the maximum expected overall return or minimum expected life-cycle cost
criterion. It was pointed out in Ref. 4 that this formulation is
adequate if a decision maker is risk-neutral but may not be adequate for decision makers who are risk-averse or risk-seeking.
Although the maximum expected utility criterion can rigorously
address a decision makers risk attitude, the selection of a widely
acceptable utility function often proves to be very difficult. The
stochastic dominance rules were therefore proposed in Ref. 4 to
select optimal designs. The stochastic dominance rules were originally developed for selecting a set of efficient or optimal investment choices when only partial information on an investors preferences e.g., risk aversion is available. These rules are
advantageous in that they can take into account different risk attitudes without the need for establishing specific utility functions.
On the other hand, they typically lead to a set of optimal or efficient designs as opposed to a single option.
The objective of the work described in this paper was to explore the application of the reliability-based optimal design framework to onshore gas transmission pipelines through one hypothetical example. The optimal design was selected from the
perspective of the investor of the example pipeline as opposed to
the general public. A set of candidate designs was created for the
pipeline by varying the pipe wall thickness. The analysis then
focused on evaluating the costs of failure and maintenance within
the pipelines service life for each design by modeling failure
events due to common integrity hazards, failure consequences,
and typical preventive maintenance actions. Key uncertainties in
the pipe resistance, hazard occurrence, load effects associated
with a given hazard occurrence, and failure consequences were
taken into consideration. Both the minimum expected life-cycle
cost criterion and stochastic dominance rules were employed to
seek optimal or efficient designs. The work was intended to provide some insights into the optimal design levels for onshore gas

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pipelines from both the risk-neutral and risk-averse perspectives.

Moreover, the relationships between the optimal designs and designs conforming to the current pipeline standards in Canada and
the United States were examined

Criteria for Optimal Design Under Uncertainty

The overall return of a civil system over its design life H can be
expressed as follows 2:
Hx = Bx Cx

1a

Cx = C0x + C f x + Cmx

1b

where x is a vector of design parameters, Bx is the benefit derived from the existence of the system, Cx is the total life-cycle
cost of the system, C0x is the initial construction cost, C f x is
the cost of failure, and Cmx is the cost of maintenance. It is
assumed that the benefit and costs can all be expressed in net
present monetary value.
The return Hx is generally uncertain because of the uncertainties in the resistance of the structure, in the hazard occurrence, in
the load effects resulting from a given occurrence of a hazard, and
in the failure consequences. An optimal design can be obtained by
maximizing the expected value of the return, i.e., EHx, where
E represents the expectation. The optimal design can also be
obtained using the stochastic dominance rules. Three stochastic
dominance rules were employed in this work, namely, the firstdegree stochastic dominance FSD, second-degree stochastic
dominance SSD, and third-degree stochastic dominance TSD.
A brief description of these rules is provided in the following.
Details can be found in Ref. 7.
Consider the problem of selecting the more efficient design
from two candidate designs, x1 and x2. Let F1h and F2h denote
the cumulative distribution functions of the return H for x1 and x2,
respectively. Suppose that the only known information about the
decision makers preference is that he/she prefers a higher return;
that is, the utility function uh for the decision maker satisfies
uh 0. The FSD rule then states that x1 is preferred to x2 or x1
dominates x2 by FSD if and only if F1h F2h at all values of
h with a strong inequality for at least one value of h. An intuitive
interpretation of the FSD rule is that x1 dominates x2 if the probability of obtaining a return equal to or higher than h under F1h
is no less than that under F2h i.e., 1-F1h 1-F2h at all
values of h 7. A graphic interpretation of the FSD rule is that x1
dominates x2 if F1h is below or tangent F2h at all values of h.
Two important necessary conditions for FSD are the mean and left
tail conditions. If x1 dominates x2 by FSD, the mean condition
dictates that the expected return associated with x1, EH1, must
be greater than the expected return associated with x2, EH2; the
left tail condition dictates that the minimum return associated with
x1 must be greater than or equal to the minimum return associated
with x2.
The SSD rule addresses risk aversion. If the decision maker
prefers higher return and is risk-averse i.e., uh 0 and uh
h
0, then x1 dominates x2 by SSD if and only if
F1sds
h
F2sds at all values of h with a strong inequality for at least
one value of h. The mean and left tail conditions as described for
FSD are also the necessary conditions for SSD, except that only a
weak inequality in the mean condition is needed for SSD, i.e.,
EH1 EH2.
The TSD rule was developed for decision makers who seek
higher returns, are risk-averse and prefer positive skewness of the
return i.e., uh 0, uh 0, and uh 0. The hypothesis
that decision makers generally favor positive skewness has been
supported by strong empirical evidence, such as people buying
lottery tickets and insuring their homes, and by positive skewness
for the rate of return on stocks 7. Given these conditions, x1
h t
dominates x2 by TSD if and only if
F1sdsdt
031702-2 / Vol. 133, JUNE 2011

h t

F2sdsdt at all values of h and EH1 EH2 with a
strong inequality for at least one of these two conditions: that is,
h t
h t
either
F1sdsdt
F2sdsdt for some value of h or
EH1 EH2.
Note that a stochastic dominance rule for risk-seeking behavior
also exists and was applied in Ref. 4 for optimal design of building structures subjected to seismic hazard. However, it was hypothesized that most pipeline operators are risk-averse given the
potentially severe consequences of pipeline failures. Therefore,
the risk-seeking stochastic dominance rule was not considered in
this study.

3 Optimal Design of Onshore Gas Pipelines Under Uncertainty

3.1 Example Pipeline. A hypothetical pipeline, adapted from
an example given in Ref. 8, was used to demonstrate the optimal
design of onshore gas pipelines under uncertainty. The pipeline is
located in Canada and designated as a class 2 pipeline. It has an
outside diameter of 508 mm i.e., nominal pipe size NPS 20, a
design pressure of 9.653 MPa 1400 psi, and a design life of 50
years. The specified minimum yield strength SMYS of the pipe
steel is 483 MPa i.e., X70 steel. The pipeline will be constructed
with double joints of 24 m long. The average population density
in the vicinity of the pipeline is 1.54 people/hectare 1 hectare
= 10,000 m2. The pipe wall thickness is the sole design parameter considered for the example.
According to the United States and Canadian pipeline standards, i.e., ASME B31.8 9 and CSA Z662-07 10, the nominal
pipe wall thickness wtn is determined from the well-known Barlow equation as follows:
wtn =

P nD
2 SMYS

where Pn is the design pressure, D is the pipe diameter, and is

the design factor, which primarily depends on the location class of
the pipeline. For a class 2 gas pipeline, the design factor equals
0.72 per CSA Z662-07 and 0.6 per ASME B31.8. Therefore, the
example pipeline will have a wall thickness of 7.05 mm if designed per CSA Z662 and a wall thickness of 8.46 mm per ASME
B31.8. By varying the design factor, a suite of candidate designs
can be developed, each corresponding to a unique pipe wall thickness.
3.2 Failure Causes and Failure Modes. Equipment impact
due to third-party interference and external corrosion were assumed to be the only failure causes for the example pipeline. This
assumption partly resulted from historical failure statistics 11,
which indicate that equipment impact and external corrosion are
relevant for all natural gas pipelines and account for approximately 6076% of all significant failure events. The assumption
was also made to simplify the analysis, as deterministic and
probabilistic models with respect to these two failure causes have
been well researched and are well documented in open literature.
Failure of pipelines due to equipment impact is the result of two
events, namely, pipeline being impacted by excavation equipment
and failure of the pipeline given impact 10. The frequency of
impact is a function of the frequency of the excavation activity
along the pipeline right-of-way ROW and the equipment impact
prevention measures, such as the pipe burial depth, above- and
below-ground signage indicating the location of the pipeline, onecall system and ROW patrol method aerial or ground, and frequency 10. The occurrence of impact events is random in time
and can be assumed to be described by a Poisson process. This
implies that the time interval between subsequent impacts follows
an exponential distribution.
Two limit states are involved in a given impact 10. The first
one is the puncture of the pipe wall by an indentor that has a shape
corresponding to that of an excavator bucket tooth. The second
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Table 1 Heat intensity thresholds for fatality and injury

Heat intensity thresholds
kW/ m2
Exposure type
Outdoor
Indoor

100% lethality

0% lethality

Onset of injury

31.6
31.6

12.6
15.8

6.3
15.8

limit state arises if the puncture force is not large enough to penetrate the pipe wall. In this case, the dent-gouge defect produced
by the indentor may fail under the pipe internal pressure upon
removal of the indentor. Details of the limit state functions associated with these two limit states are provided in Annex O of CSA
Z662-07 10. Note that both limit states are time independent;
that is, the probabilistic characteristics of the uncertain variables
involved in these limit state functions do not vary with time.
Three different failure modes are assumed to be associated with
a given failure due to equipment impact, namely, rupture or fullbore rupture, large leak, and small leak 10. A full-bore rupture
results in a double-ended gas release, with the diameter of the
release hole at each end equal to the pipe diameter 11. The
average hole diameters for large leak and small leak are typically
assumed to be 50 mm and 10 mm, respectively 11. To differentiate leak and rupture, it is assumed that puncture or failure of a
dent-gouge will result in a through-wall cracklike defect 10. The
length of the through-wall defect is assumed to equal the excavator tooth length in the case of puncture and the gouge length in the
case of dent-gouge failure. The failure is then categorized as a
rupture if the length of the through-wall defect is greater than the
critical length for unstable axial extension of the defect. Otherwise, the failure is categorized as a leak. The equation for calculating the critical defect length is given in Ref. 10. Historical
failure statistics suggest that two-thirds of the leaks are large leaks
with the rest being small leaks 11. The consequences associated
with rupture, large leak, and small leak are described in Sec. 3.3.
Failure at an active corrosion defect can be either a small leak
or a burst 10. A small leak results from the defect penetrating the
pipe wall, whereas a burst occurs if the pipe wall undergoes plastic collapse under internal pressure prior to the defect penetrating
the pipe wall 10. A burst can be further categorized as a rupture
or a large leak. The former is defined as a failure where the
through-wall defect resulting from a burst is long enough to undergo unstable axial extension, whereas the latter is defined as a
burst without unstable axial extension of the resulting throughwall defect 10. The limit state functions for burst and small leak
as well as the limit state function for distinguishing rupture and
large leak are given in Ref. 10. Note that these limit state functions are time dependent because corrosion defects grow over
time. A linear defect growth model was adopted in this study; that
is, the defect depth and length were assumed to grow in constant
depth and length growth rates 11,12.
3.3

Failure Consequences

3.3.1 Safety Implications. Two types of failure consequences

were considered in this work, namely, the impact on human safety
and damage to the operators property including the pipeline and
other nonoperator properties. The impact on human safety was
evaluated using a model known as the C-FER model 13, which
was developed to predict the thermal radiation hazard zone associated with an ignited rupture of a lean gas pipeline. The C-FER
model assumes double-ended gas release for a rupture with the
diameter of the release hole at each end equal to the pipe diameter,
and an effective release rate of one-third the peak initial rate to
acknowledge the rapid drop in line pressure associated with the
rupture. Using a circle to represent the hazard area given ignition,
the model calculates the heat intensity level as a function of gas
release rate and distance from the failure site. Alternatively, the
Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

radius of the hazard area, rhr m, within which the heat intensity
level exceeds a certain threshold, Ith, can be calculated as follows:
rhr =

0.1547pD2
Ith

where p is pipe internal pressure at the time of failure Pa, D is

the pipe diameter m, and Ith is a given heat intensity threshold
kW/ m2. Note that the C-FER model is conditioned on ignition.
The probability of ignition given a rupture Pir can be approximated by a linear function of the pipe diameter as follows 11:
Pir = 0.000492D

The thermal radiation hazard radius associated with an ignited

large leak, rhl, is estimated by slightly modifying Eq. 3 to account for the fact that a large leak is a single-ended release from a
hole much smaller than the pipe diameter. Furthermore, the effective release rate was assumed to be the same as the peak initial
release rate given that the line pressure is likely to decrease slowly
with a small release hole. These modifications resulted in the following equation for calculating rhl m:
rhl =

0.2321pD2h
Ith

where Dh is the diameter of the release hole m with a typical

value of 0.05 m. The probability of ignition given a large leak, Pil,
was assumed to be a constant of 0.1 11.
A small leak is associated with a low probability of ignition.
Furthermore, the thermal radiation radius corresponding to an ignited small leak is negligible because the size of the release hole is
very small not exceeding 10 mm in diameter. Therefore, the
safety implication associated with a small leak is negligible.
The harm to people caused by thermal radiation is related to the
thermal dosage received. The thermal dosage is measured by the
thermal dosage unit, which is a function of the heat intensity level
i.e., heat flux and the exposure time 1315. For an ignited
pipeline incident, it has been suggested in Ref. 15 that an exposure time of 30 s is considered representative by taking into account typical reaction time of an individual exposed to the incident, escape speed of the individual, and likelihood of finding a
shelter within a reasonable distance. Based on this exposure time,
the heat intensity thresholds corresponding to 100% and 0% lethality for outdoor and indoor exposures were recommended in
Ref. 15 and are summarized in Table 1. It was further suggested
in Ref. 15 that the lethality corresponding to a heat intensity
level between the 100% and 0% lethality levels be 50% for outdoor exposure and 25% for indoor exposure. The latter is based on
assuming a probability of ignition of 50% for a typical woodframed structure subjected to heat intensity levels between
15.8 kW/ m2 and 31.6 kW/ m2 and a probability of lethality of
50% given ignition. It then follows that the probability of injury
for heat intensity levels between 15.8 kW/ m2 and 31.6 kW/ m2
is also 25% for indoor exposure. For outdoor exposure, the probability of injury for heat intensity levels between 12.6 kW/ m2
and 31.6 kW/ m2 is 50%.
Based on a summary of the effects of thermal radiation on
people given in Ref. 13, a heat intensity threshold of
6.3 kW/ m2 with an exposure time of 30 s was selected to define
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Fig. 1 Heat intensity thresholds and human safety implications: a outdoor exposure and b indoor exposure

the onset of burn injury for outdoor exposure. It was pointed out
in Ref. 15 that a typical wood-framed structure is very unlikely
to ignite when subjected to a radiation intensity of 15.8 kW/ m2
or lower and will therefore afford indefinite protection to the occupants. Given this, the heat intensity threshold for the onset of
injury was selected to be identical to that for 0% lethality i.e.,
15.8 kW/ m2 for indoor exposure. A summary of the selected
heat intensity thresholds and corresponding implications for human safety is depicted in Fig. 1.
3.3.2 Failure Costs. The cost of fatality and injury can be
determined from the values of a statistical life VSL and a statistical injury VSI. Viscusi and Aldy 16 recently carried out a
comprehensive review of studies of mortality and injury risk premiums published in the past 30 years. The review indicated that
VSL in Canada is typically between $3$6 million in 2000 US$.
VSI in Canada ranges from approximately $1300$190,000 in
2000 US$, where the upper limit is associated with a severe
injury. Based on the data summarized in Ref. 16, VSL and VSI
were selected to be $4.5 million and $15,000, respectively.
The cost of property damage including the value of lost product was estimated from the database of significant pipeline incidents administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation
DOT.2 DOT requires pipeline operators to report an incident if it
meets any one of a set of reporting thresholds e.g., resulting in
2

http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/CPI.html

031702-4 / Vol. 133, JUNE 2011

fatality or injury, incurring a total cost of over $50,000 or more in

1984 $, etc.. The total property damage category in an incident
report represents the estimated total cost of the damage to the
public and private nonoperator properties, the damage to the
operator assets and the value of lost product.
The incidents included in the DOT database for onshore gas
transmission pipelines from 2002 to 2008 were examined in this
work. Although incidents that occurred between 1986 and 2001
were also available in the database, the information related to
these incidents was not reported as completely as that for incidents that occurred after 2002. For example, whether or not ignition occurred was not reported for the pre-2002 incidents. Furthermore, it was unclear to the authors that whether the value of lost
product was included in the total estimated property damage reported for the pre-2002 incidents. Therefore, pre-2002 incidents
were not considered in estimating the cost of property damage.
Due to the limited number of incident data in the database, the
cost of property damage CPD was estimated as a function of the
failure mode rupture or large leak and presence absence of
ignition only; the impact of other parameters such as pressure,
diameter, and wall thickness was ignored. Given that the example
is a class 2 pipeline, the impact of location class was approximately accounted for by including the incident data points for
class 1 and class 2 pipelines the number of data points will be
significantly limited if only incidents for class 2 pipelines are
included. To this end, 28 data points for ignited rupture incidents
were collected, resulting in an average CPD of $1,550,000 all
estimated CPD in 2007 US$. Note that in deriving the above
cost, an incident that occurred in 2005 and resulted in $94.5 million estimated property damage was excluded as it was considered
an extreme case and not representative of typical ruptures. The
average CPD per nonignited rupture was estimated to be $445,900
based on 47 data points.
The CPD for large leak was estimated based on the leak incidents reported in the database. There are only three ignited leak
incidents on class 1 and class 2 pipelines between 2002 and 2008,
with an average CPD of $241,000. The average CPD per nonignited leak incident was estimated to be $402,400 based on 85 data
points. The fact that the average CPD per ignited leak is less than
the average CPD per nonignited leak was considered an anomaly
and can be attributed to the small number of ignited leak incidents
included in the database. In light of this, the ignited and nonignited leak incidents were combined together to result in an average CPD of $396,900 per large leak.
The information in the DOT database is not suitable for estimating the cost of property damage per small leak. This is because
most small leaks are not serious enough to meet the reporting
thresholds and therefore are not reported 11. Note that small
leaks are unlikely to result in casualty or property damage because
of the low probability of ignition and insignificant thermal radiation hazard area given ignition. Therefore, the cost of a small leak
was assumed to be solely the cost of excavating and repairing the
pipeline at the location of the leak.
Ideally, indirect failure consequences should also be considered
in the analysis. Such consequences may include increased regulatory pressure, lost public confidence, and litigations. Due to a lack
of information, it is not possible to quantify these consequences.
Therefore, they were not considered in this study.
3.4 Acceptable Risk Levels. As described in Sec. 3.3, failures of gas pipelines have significant life safety implications. The
maximum risk levels acceptable to the general public should be
taken into account in the selection of optimal designs. Two types
of life safety risks are usually considered in risk- or reliabilitybased design and assessment of gas pipelines, namely, societal
risk and individual risk 8,11. Societal risk is a measure of the
overall risk of fatality due to pipeline incidents and can be represented by the expected number of fatalities per unit length of
pipeline per year. Individual risk is typically represented by the
annual probability of fatality due to pipeline incidents for an inTransactions of the ASME

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dividual located in the vicinity of the pipeline.

In a recent study sponsored by the Pipeline Research Council
International PRCI, the average societal risk level for the onshore gas transmission pipeline network in the United States, as
implied by the current design and maintenance practice, was calibrated to be 1.6 105 fatality/ km year 8,11. This value was
then adopted as the allowable societal risk level for the development of a set of target reliability levels for onshore gas pipelines.
The PRCI-sponsored study also considered individual risk criterion in the target reliability development and adopted 104 per
year as the allowable individual risk level for class 1 and class 2
pipelines. However, it was found that the individual risk criterion
typically does not govern the target reliability selection except for
small diameter low pressure class 1 pipelines. For the pipeline
example assumed in this study, an allowable societal risk level of
1.6 105 fatality/ km year was considered as a constraint in the
optimal design selection. Given that the example is a highpressure large diameter class 2 pipeline, the individual risk constraint was not considered based on the findings reported in Refs.
8,11.
3.5 Maintenance. The maintenance actions considered in this
study involved periodic inspection and preventive repair of external corrosion defects. Although other maintenance activities are
also common in practice e.g., regular ground or aerial patrol of
the pipeline ROW to prevent equipment impact, they were not
considered in the analysis because the implementation and impact
of these measures are generally independent of pipe wall
thickness.
In a given maintenance event, a high-resolution inline inspection tool was assumed to be used to detect and size corrosion
defects. Defects that are detected by the tool and exceed certain
repair thresholds will be excavated and repaired immediately after
the inspection. A detected defect will be repaired if it meets any
one of the following two criteria 11,12:
M
dmax
wtn

6a

rbM Pn

6b

M
is the maximum defect depth
where dmax
tion tool; rbM is the defect burst pressure

measured by the inspecpredicted from the measured defect depth and length as well as the nominal pipe geometric and material properties; and are constants that define the
repair thresholds.
The detection capability of the inspection tool is represented by
the probability of detection POD, which was assumed to follow
an exponential type of function as follows 12,17:
POD = 1 eqdmax

where dmax is the maximum defect depth and q is a constant that

defines the tool accuracy and can be quantified from tool specifications that give the POD value for a prescribed reference defect
depth.
M
and l M , are related
The measured defect depth and length, dmax
to the actual defect depth and length, dmax and l, through the
following equations:
M
dmax
= dmax + ed

8a

l M = l + el

8b

where ed and el are random variables representing the depth and

length measurement errors associated with the tool, respectively.
They are typically characterized by normal distributions with the
corresponding mean and standard deviations quantified from tool
specifications e.g., specified error band for depth measurement
with a certain probability level 12.
3.6 Cost-Benefit Formulation for the Example Pipeline.
Given the descriptions in Secs. 3.23.4, the total return on the
example pipeline can be calculated as follows:
Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

Table 2 Summary of candidate designs for the example

pipeline
Candidate design

Nominal wall thickness

mm

Design factor

8.46
8.19
7.93
7.69
7.47
7.25
7.05
6.86
6.68
6.35

0.60
0.62
0.64
0.66
0.68
0.70
0.72
0.74
0.76
0.80

D1 ASME design
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7 CSA design
D8
D9
D10

Hwtn = B Cwtn = B C0wtn C f wtn Cmwtn 9a

2

C f wtn =

ni

C
i=1 j=1

Lrij

+ CPrijeij

9b

Cmwtn =

C + C
I

k=1

Rke

ij

9c

where B is the benefit derived from the existence of the pipeline,

considered to be independent of pipe wall thickness; ni is the total
number of failures due to the ith failure cause throughout the
design life of the pipeline; CLrij and CPrij are the cost of fatality
and injury and cost of property damage, respectively, associated
with the jth failure due to the ith failure cause, where rij is an
index representing the failure mode associated with the failure,
i.e., rij = 1, 2, and 3 representing small leak, large leak and rupture,
respectively; ij is the time of occurrence of the jth failure due to
the ith failure cause; is the discount rate; e represents the
continuous discounting function 1; v is the total number of
scheduled corrosion maintenance events; CI is the cost of inline
inspection and assumed to be a constant; and CRk is the cost of
possible defect excavation and repair at the kth maintenance
event. Note that CRk may differ for different events. It is assumed
that the pipeline will be immediately restored to its original condition if a failure occurs.
Since a pipeline is a linear system, the probability of concurrent
failure events due to equipment impact and external corrosion at
the same location is extremely unlikely. Therefore, the total failure
cost in Eq. 7 is a summation of the contributions from individual
failure events due to equipment impact and corrosion applied independently. Because the benefit is independent of pipe wall
thickness, the total return can be simplified as Hwtn = Cwtn
= C0wtn C f wtn Cmwtn. It follows that the optimal design
can be determined by maximizing the expected return or equivalently minimizing the life-cycle cost. The optimal designs can
also be determined from the probability distributions of the overall return i.e., C associated with the candidate designs by applying the stochastic dominance rules.
3.7 Summary of Input Parameters and Analysis
Procedure. A total of ten candidate designs, summarized in Table
2, was created for the example pipeline. The input parameters
required to estimate the expected life-cycle costs and probability
distributions of the overall returns for these designs are summarized in Tables 48 in Appendix. All random variables were assumed to be independent of each other. The independence assumption also extends to random variables at different locations
along the pipeline; that is, failure events associated with different
corrosion defects or different equipment impacts are independent
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Table 3 Summary of the calculated costs and life safety risk levels
Cost
CAD$/km
EC f
C0

Design
D1 ASME
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7 CSA
D8
D9
D10

269,682
261,125
253,095
245,543
238,429
231,715
225,370
219,362
213,666
203,118

Equipment impact Corrosion ECm E C f + Cm

2,423
3,020
3,445
5,168
6,675
8,844
11,116
13,382
16,650
27,139

415
514
632
778
925
1024
1084
1143
1130
895

of each other.
For a given design, C0 is a deterministic quantity and can be
calculated from the corresponding nominal wall thickness and unit
costs given in Table 8. Note that cost components independent of
wall thickness e.g., excavation and coating costs were excluded
from C0. The Monte-Carlo technique was employed to evaluate
the probability distribution of C f + Cm associated with the design.
Each simulation trial involved generating samples of input parameters summarized in Tables 48 and using the samples to calculate
the cost of failure due to equipment impact and external corrosion
as well as the cost of scheduled corrosion maintenance events
over the design life of the pipeline i.e., 50 years.
To analyze equipment impact in a given simulation trial, a sequence of impact events within a span of 50 years is generated
along a unit length of the pipeline i.e., 1 km based on the property of the Poisson process that describes the occurrence of impact
event. The limit state functions associated with each impact are
then checked to identify potential failure incidents and corresponding failure modes. Given failure, the cost of fatality and
injury will arise if ignition occurs and people are present within
the hazard impact zone. The cost of property damage, on the other
hand, will always arise given failure.
To analyze external corrosion in a given simulation trial, a number of significant corrosion defects is generated along 1 km of the
pipeline based on the property of the Poisson process that describes the spatial distribution of the defects. Each of the generated defects is conservatively assumed to exist at the start of the
service life i.e., no corrosion initiation time and to grow in depth
and length at constant growth rates that are generated from the
corresponding growth rate distributions. A given defect is removed from the trial if it is detected and repaired during one of
the scheduled maintenance events generated in the trial. Failure
and the corresponding failure mode at the defect are identified if
any of the limit state functions associated with the defect is violated before the next scheduled maintenance or between the last
scheduled maintenance and end of 50 years. Given failure, the
cost of failure is calculated in the same way as for equipment
impact. In estimating the cost of maintenance, it is assumed that
each defect to be repaired requires a separate excavation and repair.

22,140
23,488
24,944
26,469
28,104
30,161
32,636
35,905
40,476
56,422

24,977
27,021
29,020
32,414
35,704
40,028
44,836
50,430
58,255
84,456

EC

Rs
fatality/ km yr

294,660
288,147
282,115
277,958
274,133
271,744
270,206
269,792
271,922
287,574

251,135
276,518
297,439
383,717
400,168
465,775
528,434
592,300
644,470
828,381

3.3 106
4.9 106
6.5 106
9.5 106
1.2 105
1.4 105
1.5 105
1.7 105
1.8 105
2.3 105

sign factor increases because a higher design factor leads to a near

proportional decrease in the pipe wall thickness. On the other
hand, EC f + Cm increases as the design factor increases because
a thinner pipe wall leads to increases in the probability of failure
as well as the probability of corrosion defect repair, therefore,
resulting in higher expected costs of failure and maintenance.
For all the candidate designs, EC f accounts for less than 10%
of EC, whereas ECm is markedly higher than EC f and accounts for a more significant percentage between 8% and 20%
of EC. This suggests that the corrosion maintenance parameters,
i.e., inspection schedule and repair criteria, can be considered as
design parameters in addition to the wall thickness to improve the
locally optimal design obtained in the present analysis. This will
be studied in future investigations.
Based on the minimum expected life-cycle cost criterion i.e.,
for a risk-neutral decision maker, the optimal design is D8, corresponding to a design factor of 0.74 and a wall thickness of 6.86
mm. The design with the largest wall thickness, D1 i.e., ASME
design, has the highest EC, due to the high value of C0. The
value of EC f due to corrosion for D10 is lower than that for D9
see Table 3, which appears counterintuitive. This can be explained by the fact that the defect repair thresholds i.e., = 0.5
and = 1.39, which are fixed for all the designs, become significantly more stringent for D10 than for D9 as the pipe wall thickness decreases from D9 to D10 and result in more defects being

Results and Discussion

The expected life-cycle costs EC and corresponding cost

components i.e., C0, EC f , and ECm for all the candidate designs are summarized in Table 3. In addition, the standard deviation of the life-cycle cost c and the average annual life safety risk
in terms of fatality Rs are also summarized in the table. In Fig. 2,
C0, EC f + Cm, and EC are plotted versus the design factor. The
figure shows that C0 decreases approximately linearly as the de031702-6 / Vol. 133, JUNE 2011

Fig. 2 Variation of the expected life-cycle cost with design

factor

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Fig. 3 CDFs of the normalized returns

repaired as opposed to being left in the pipeline. As shown in Fig.

2, the portion of the EC curve bounded by D4 and D9 i.e.,
design factors 0.66 and 0.76, respectively is relatively flat. The
values of EC associated with D4 and D9 are higher than that
associated with the optimal design D8 by only 3.0% and 0.8%,
respectively. Furthermore, EC for D7 CSA design is only 0.2%
higher than that for D8. This suggests that EC is insensitive to
wall thickness variation in the vicinity of the optimal design.
The calculated societal risk levels Rs for D1D10 range from
3.3 106 fatality/ km year to 2.3 105 fatality/ km year. Note
that Rs increases approximately linearly from D1 to D10, which is
in contrast to the more rapid increase in EC f + Cm. This is because the increase in the probability of large leak accounts for the
majority of the increase in the overall failure probability from D1
to D10. The safety consequences of large leak are relatively small
whereas the financial consequences of large leaks are significant
see Table 8; therefore, EC f increases substantially from D1 to
D10 with a relatively small increase in the life safety risk. The Rs
values associated with D8D10 exceed the allowable societal risk
level of 1.6 105 fatality/ km year. Therefore, the optimal design becomes D7, i.e., the CSA design, if the allowable societal
risk level is applied as a constraint. As shown in Table 2, c
increases markedly from D1 to D10. Although this is irrelevant in
the context of the minimum expected life-cycle cost criterion, it
has significant implications for selecting the optimal design using
the stochastic dominance rules as described in the following paragraphs.
The cumulative distribution functions CDF of the returns i.e.,
C per km associated with the designs are depicted in Fig. 3. All
the returns are normalized by the initial construction cost associated with the ASME design i.e., C0 = $269, 682/ km. Log scales
are used for both the normalized return and CDF to facilitate
interpreting the figure. Figure 3 shows that the distribution curves
intersect each other; therefore, there are no dominant designs
based on the FSD rule. In other words, all ten candidate designs
are efficient or optimal choices based on the FSD rule. As shown
in the figure, the minimum return decreases i.e., the maximum
life-cycle cost increases as the wall thickness decreases because a
smaller wall thickness increases the costs of failure and maintenance. The maximum return increases i.e., the minimum lifeJournal of Pressure Vessel Technology

cycle cost decreases as the wall thickness decreases because a

smaller wall thickness reduces the initial construction cost.
To identify optimal designs based on the SSD rule, the integrations of the CDFs of the normalized returns the integration is
referred to as I1 for brevity for D1D10 are depicted in Figs. 4a
and 4b, where the latter is a close-up view of the upper end of
the former to facilitate the description of the results. Figure 4
indicates that D9 and D10 are suboptimal designs while D1D8
are all optimal designs according to the SSD rule. In other words,
for a risk-averse decision maker any designs involving design
factors greater than or equal to 0.76 are suboptimal for the example pipeline. D10 is suboptimal because it is dominated by
D3D8,3 i.e., I1 for D3D8 is below I1 for D10 over the entire
range of the return. D9 is suboptimal because it is dominated by
D8. Because I1 for D1D8 intersects each other, all of these designs are optimal. The fact that D8, the design with the minimum
expected life-cycle cost, belongs to the optimal design set per the
SSD rule is not unexpected because the mean condition for the
SSD rule see Sec. 2 requires that the optimal design set, if existing at all, must contain the design with the maximum expected
return or equivalently the minimum expected life-cycle cost for
this example. Note that the pipe wall thickness corresponding to
D8 is the lower bound of the wall thicknesses corresponding to
the optimal design set based on the SSD rule. In other words, any
design that utilizes a wall thickness greater than that corresponding to the minimum expected life-cycle cost is considered optimal
based on the SSD rule.
The division of the optimal and suboptimal design sets can be
qualitatively explained through the standard deviation of the return. A risk-averse decision maker dislikes uncertainty; this means
that the expected utility for a given return decreases as the standard deviation of the return increases other statistics remaining
the same 7. As shown in Table 3, c increases markedly from
D1 to D10, whereas the change in the expected life-cycle cost is
relatively small note that the return and life-cycle cost are identical other than the sign for the example. It then follows that the
3
According to the stochastic dominance theory, an inefficient or suboptimal design need not be dominated by all the efficient designs. Instead, dominance by only
one efficient design is sufficient to relegate a particular design to the inefficient set.

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Fig. 4 Integration of the CDFs of the normalized returns: a overall range and b close-up view
of the upper end

uncertainty of the return increases significantly from D1 to D10,

eventually making D9 and D10 suboptimal from a risk-averse
perspective.
Double integrations of the CDFs of the returns referred to as
I2 for D1D10 were carried out to identify optimal designs based
on the TSD rule. The results are depicted in Fig. 5. The figure
indicates that I2 for D8 is below I2 for D9 and D10 over the entire
range of the return. Furthermore, EH for D8 is greater than EH
for D9 and D10 based on Table 3 EH = EC. Therefore, D9
and D10 are dominated by D8 per the TSD rule and are suboptimal. D1D8 belong to the optimal design set because none of
031702-8 / Vol. 133, JUNE 2011

them dominates the others by satisfying the two conditions for the
TSD rule. This means that the optimal design set identified using
the SSD rule cannot be further narrowed down by including more
information about the decision makers preference i.e., positive
skewness in the return in addition to the risk-averse attitude.
If
the
allowable
societal
risk
level
of
1.6
105 fatality/ km year is applied as a constraint, the optimal
design set based on the three stochastic dominance rules then
consists of D1D7. Among this optimal set, the wall thickness for
the design leading to the lowest expected life-cycle cost i.e., D7
or the CSA design is the lower bound value of the wall thicknesses for D1D7.
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Fig. 5 Double integration of the CDFs of the normalized returns

Conclusions

The optimal design level for onshore natural gas transmission

pipelines was explored through a hypothetical pipeline example in
this paper. The work employed the reliability-based cost-benefit
analysis framework established in literature and focused on evaluating the life-cycle cost of the pipeline. The pipe wall thickness
was selected as the sole design parameter. Based on historical
failure statistics, equipment impact and external corrosion were
assumed to be the two failure causes for the pipeline. The lifecycle cost included the wall thickness-related initial construction
cost as well as the costs of failure and maintenance. The cost of
failure included the cost of fatality and injury, costs of damage to
the public and private properties, and the value of lost product.
Due to a lack of information, indirect failure consequences such
as increased regulatory pressure, lost of public confidence, and
litigation cost were not considered. The cost of maintenance included the cost of scheduled inline inspection and preventive repair of external corrosion defects. The allowable societal risk was
considered as a constraint in the optimal design selection,
whereby the average societal risk associated with the gas transmission pipeline network in the United States, as implied by the
current design practice, was adopted as the allowable societal risk
level.
The optimal design for the example pipeline was sought by
applying the minimum expected life-cycle cost criterion as well as
the first-, second-, and third-degree stochastic dominance rules.

The results show that the optimal design based on the minimum
expected life-cycle cost criterion utilizes a design factor of 0.74. If
the allowable societal risk constraint is applied, the CSA design,
which utilizes a design factor of 0.72, becomes the optimal design. It was observed that the expected life-cycle cost is insensitive to wall thickness variation in the vicinity of the optimal design. The expected life-cycle cost of the CSA design is practically
the same as that corresponding to a design factor of 0.74. The
results also show that the expected cost of maintenance accounts
for a significant portion of the expected life-cycle cost. Therefore,
the optimal design achieved in this analysis can be potentially
improved by considering the maintenance parameters as design
parameters in addition to the wall thickness.
Based on the second- and third-degree stochastic dominance
rules, any designs involving design factors of 0.76 or greater are
suboptimal for a risk-averse decision maker. Applying the allowable societal risk constraint will further relegate the design involving a design factor of 0.74 to the suboptimal design set. Both the
CSA and ASME designs belong to the optimal design set and
satisfy the allowable societal risk constraint. Note that the ASME
design has the highest expected life-cycle cost of all candidate
designs. The wall thickness of the design with the minimum expected life-cycle cost is the lower bound of those included in the
optimal set. The results demonstrate the implication of the variability of the life-cycle cost for selecting the optimal design from
a risk-averse perspective.

Table 4 Basic pipeline attributes

Parameter
Wall thickness
Internal pressure
Diameter
Yield strength
Tensile strength
Charpy v-notch toughness

Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

Probability dist.

Mean

Std. dev.

Source

Normal
Deterministic
Deterministic
Normal
Normal
Normal

1.0 wtn
9.653 MPa
508 mm
530 MPa
615.9 MPa
108 J

0.015 wtn
NA
NA
18.6 MPa
18.5 MPa
17.7 J

Assumed
10

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Table 5 Input parameters for modeling equipment impact and external corrosion
Parameter
Number of impacts
Excavator weight
Excavator tooth length
Gouge depth
Gouge length
Number of significant corrosion defects
Initial average defect depth
Initial defect length
Average defect depth growth rate
Defect length growth rate
Max. to avg. defect depth ratiob

Probability dist.

Mean

Std. dev.

Source

Poisson
Gamma
Uniform
Weibull
Lognormal
Poisson
Weibull
Lognormal
Weibull
Lognormal
Shifted lognormalc

0.004/ km year a
15.2 tons
90 mm
1.2 mm
201 mm
4.0/km
0.005 mm
30 mm
0.06 mm/year
1.0 mm/year
2.16

0.063/ km yr
10.8 tons
28.9 mm
1.1 mm
372 mm
2.0/km
0.0025 mm
15 mm
0.03 mm/year
0.5 mm/year
1.03

10
10
8

a
The mean impact rate is suggested in Ref. 10 for a pipeline located in an undeveloped area i.e., class 1 and class 2 areas
with typical equipment impact prevention measures.
b
The ratio was used to calculate the maximum defect depth from the average depth for the purpose of distinguishing small leak
from burst.
c
Lower bound= 1.0.

Table 6 Input parameters for modeling maintenance

Parameter

Characterization
10a
10 yearsa
0.5a
1.39a
2.30/wall thicknessb
Normal distributionc
Mean= 0; std. dev. = 0.078 wall thickness
Normal distributionc
Mean= 0; std. dev. = 15.6 mm

Year of first maintenance event

Subsequent maintenance event interval

q
ed
el

a M
rb was calculated using the B31G modified criterion 18. The inspection interval and repair thresholds are consistent with
typical industry practice 11.
b
Based on assumed tool specifications that give a POD of 90% for a reference defect depth of 10% wall thickness.
c
Based on assumed tool specifications that give a depth measurement error band of 10% wall thickness with a probability of
80%, and a length measurement error band of 20 mm with a probability of 80%.

Table 7 Input parameters for evaluating safety-related failure consequences

Parameter

Characterization

Population in hazard zone

Poisson distribution
Mean= 1.54 people/hectare;
0.4b
90% indoor; 10% outdoorb

Probability of occupancy
Indoor-outdoor split given occupancy
a

Represent the probability of people being present within the hazard area given failure.
Based on the values given in Ref. 11.

Table 8 Summary of unit costs

Cost item
Bare pipe
Transportation and double-jointing
Welding
Inline inspection
Corrosion defect excavation
Corrosion defect repair
Fatality
Injury
Property damage due to rupture-ignition
Property damage due to rupture-no ignition
Property damage due to large leak
Discount rate

Unit

Costa

Source

$/tonne
% bare pipe cost

1400
66
20
4000
50,000
5000
5,962,000b
20,000b
1,787,700
514,300
457,800b
5.0

$/km
$/defect
$/fatality
$/injury
$/rupture
$/rupture
$/large leak
%

16
DOT database
5

All absolute costs are in terms of 2006 Canadian dollars CAD$.

Costs that were originally given in US$ at years other than 2006 were converted to 2006 CAD$ by assuming an annual
inflation rate of 2.0% and an exchange rate of 1.00 CAD$ = 0.85 US$.
b

031702-10 / Vol. 133, JUNE 2011

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Finally, it must be emphasized that the conclusions reached in

this study are applicable to the particular example only. Further
studies will be required to investigate if any of these conclusions
can be generalized.

Acknowledgment
The financial support provided to the first author by the University of Western Ontario and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada NSERC under Grant No.
376295-2009 is gratefully acknowledged. The first author would
like to thank Professor H.P. Hong for helpful discussions during
the preparation of the manuscript.

7
8
9
10
11

Appendix

12

The input parameters used to estimate the expected life-cycle

costs and probability distributions of the overall returns are summarized in Tables 48.

13

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