Elastic-plastic buckling of buried pipelines by seismic excitation

A quasi-bifurcation theory of dynamic buckling and a simple flow theory of plasticity are employed to analyze the axisymmetric, elastic-plastic buckling behavior of buried pipelines subject to seismic excitations. Using the seismic records of the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, a series of numerical results have been obtained, which show that, at strain rates prevalent in earthquakes, the dynamic buckling axial stress or strain of a buried pipe is only slightly higher than that of static buckling.