Determining Critical Limits for Creep Velocities of OSBAT Right-of-Way Slope

Petrobras Transporte S/A – TRANSPETRO – is the largest natural-gas processing company in Brazil and holds the leading position in fuel transportation and logistics in the country. The 14,000-km pipeline network, like other civil transportation infrastructure, crosses a huge variety of geological-geotechnical terrains, including those susceptible to natural hazards. The OSBAT right-of-way, which belongs to TRANSPETRO’s pipeline network, has become the object of study in this paper because some sections along the right-of-way have installed geotechnical instrumentation that indicates creep movements, which have been acting continuously for decades. Due to the importance of the OSBAT pipeline, a bibliographic review to support the development of limits for displacement velocity of slope shearing zones was concluded to assist the department responsible for evaluating when atypical behavior in the historical displacement data occurs. This geotechnical warning, allied with field and in-line inspections, will improve the pipeline risk management program. The limits for inclinometers were established using T-Student statistical analysis from a reading database based on geotechnical field inspections. However, direct correlation with pipe strain was not verified due to small accumulated displacements.Copyright © 2015 by ASME