Behaviour of steel wire-reinforced thermoplastic pipe under combined bending and internal pressure

ABSTRACTPlastic pipe reinforced by steel wires (PSP) is a new kind of composite pipe, which has the advantages of corrosion-resistant, light weight and low cost. Generally, the middle layer of PSP includes helically wound high-strength steel wires as enhanced body and high-density PE as a matrix. In the engineering practice, this kind of composite pipe endures combined bending and internal pressure. Thus, it is of great importance to investigate the burst pressure of PSP under this load condition. In this paper, a full-scale laboratorial test of PSP under combined bending and internal pressure was carried out. A finite-element model (FEM) was established to study the mechanical behaviour and failure mode. In addition, we deduced a simple but effective formula for calculating the burst pressure of PSP under combined bending and internal pressure. The results obtained from the three methods show a good agreement.