On the evaluation of plastic buckling of pipeline bending

In the present paper, various formulae for evaluating critical buckling strain of bending pipeline are analyzed on basis of its actual nature, available test data or finite element calculation results. The available test data is from different resources, it provides a more objective comparison; Especially, the experimental bending buckling data of Corona et al. and Kyriakides et al. for Al-6061-T6 aluminum pipes with various D/t value, as well as the prediction of Minnaar’s FEM regressive formula for high grade steel pipe are reanalyzed to check the reasonability of the plastically elliptical cross-section model. It shows that the consequence of the plastically elliptical cross-section model is more reasonable than others for the critical buckling strain prediction of a pipe bending in most cases.