Sustainable Pipelines and Unsaturated Soils

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to collect the recent research and new developments in sustainable pipeline designs in onshore and offshore contexts.  

Pipelines are lifelines that play a vital role in transporting energy and services in modern society. They are commonly buried to provide environmental stability, thermal insulation, and mechanical protection. Hence, the designs of these lifelines are often impacted by the buried soil condition. Onshore pipelines are usually buried above the water table, where the soil moisture is partially saturated. Such partial saturation may provide stability to the buried pipeline under operational loads due to suction/water meniscus effect, which can make soil stiffer and stronger. On the other hand, externally imposed ground movements can adversely impact the pipeline due to additional load imposed by the effects of the soil’s partial saturation. While this phenomenon is not applicable for offshore pipelines, inherently severe operating conditions can challenge their serviceability unless the soil condition is carefully assessed to counteract the adverse conditions.  

This Special Issue focuses on the new developments in evaluating the behavior of onshore and offshore pipelines subjected to operational and/or geohazard loads. We are seeking contributions of experimental and numerical investigations on evaluating the performance of onshore/offshore pipelines under loadings. We also encourage the submission of research works on new developments of unsaturated soils as well as research works aiming at the implementation of best practices or strategies for safe pipeline operations. Authors should clearly identify the knowledge gap and the novelty of their work, and should highlight the main relevance of their research outcomes.

Dr. Dilan J. Robert
Dr. Zhou Annan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Onshore pipelines
• offshore pipelines
• unsaturated soils
• operational loads
• ground movements