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The present paper determines collapse moments of pressurized 30°–180° pipe bends incorporated with initial geometric imperfection under out-of-plane bending moment. Extensive finite element analyses are carried out considering material as well as geometric nonlinearity. The twice-elastic-slope method is used to determine collapse moment. The results show that initial imperfection produces significant change in collapse moment for unpressurized pipe bends and pipe bends applied to higher internal pressure. The application of internal pressure produces stiffening effect to pipe bends which increases collapse moment up to a certain limit and with further increase in pressure, collapse moment decreases. The bend angle effect on collapse moment reduces with the increase in internal pressure and bend radius. Based on finite element results, collapse moment equations are formed as a function of the pipe bend geometry parameters, initial geometric imperfection, bend angle, and internal pressure for elastic-perfectly plastic material models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the recent literature, it is revealed that pipe bend geometry deviates from the circular cross-section due to pipe bending process for any bend angle, and this deviation in the cross-section is defined as the initial geometric imperfection. This paper focuses on the determination of collapse moment of different angled pipe bends incorporated with initial geometric imperfection subjected to in-plane closing and opening bending moments. The three-dimensional finite element analysis is accounted for geometric as well as material nonlinearities. Python scripting is implemented for modeling the pipe bends with initial geometry imperfection. The twice-elastic-slope method is adopted to determine the collapse moments. From the results, it is observed that initial imperfection has significant impact on the collapse moment of pipe bends. It can be concluded that the effect of initial imperfection decreases with the decrease in bend angle from 150∘ to 45∘. Based on the finite element results, a simple collapse moment equation is proposed to predict the collapse moment for more accurate cross-section of the different angled pipe bends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]