Reinforced Thermoplastic Pipe (RTP) is a flexible composite pipe that currently receives fair acceptance in the oil and gas industry, with high potentials to be used as a replacement to the carbon steel (CS) pipes especially in high corrosive environment. As RTP is relatively new products, their designs and qualifications are governed by the industry practice at present in the absence of comprehensive technical design standards. Most literatures to date are mainly dedicated to the intact RTPs, while the response of the pipe towards various defects have not been fully understood. Quite often, the assessments are made by referring to the design standards of the CS pipes, which are not entirely suitable due to the flexible characteristics of the composite pipe itself. Thus, this paper aims at assessing the performance of a 4″ RTP when exposed to lateral loads from external interferences such as the anchor dropped. Herein, the damaged to the RTP pipe was made in the form of a dent indented by a cylindrical conical nose under the quasi-static indentation procedures carried out experimentally. The damaged or dented pipe was later tested for its burst capacity using a burst testing facility specially fabricated for composite pipes. During the experiments, two types of failure modes were observed, namely single unit and ply-by-ply failures. Outcomes obtained from the experiments were used to describe the relationships between three important parameters, namely lateral load, indentation depth and burst pressure using polynomial regression equations. These simplified equations may be adopted directly in pipeline assessments and operations of RTP pipes exposed to dents. Moreover, outcomes from this paper will be beneficial in qualifying further RTP as a new free-corrosion risk transportation system for the oil and gas industry.

增强型热塑性管 (RTP) 是一种柔性复合管，目前在石油和天然气行业中得到了广泛的认可，具有用作碳钢 (CS) 管替代品的潜力，尤其是在高腐蚀性环境中。由于RTP是相对较新的产品，在缺乏全面的技术设计标准的情况下，其设计和资质以目前的行业惯例为准。迄今为止，大多数文献主要致力于完整的 RTP，而管道对各种缺陷的响应尚未完全了解。很多时候，评估是参考CS管的设计标准进行的，由于复合管本身的柔性特性，这些标准并不完全适合。因此，本文旨在评估 4 英寸 RTP 在受到外部干扰（例如锚点掉落）产生的横向载荷时的性能。在本文中，RTP 管的损坏是在实验进行的准静态压痕程序下由圆柱形圆锥鼻压痕形成的凹痕形式。损坏或凹陷的管道后来使用专门为复合管道制造的爆破测试设备进行了爆破能力测试。在实验过程中，观察到两种类型的失效模式，即单层失效和层层失效。从实验中获得的结果用于描述三个重要参数之间的关系，即使用多项式回归方程的横向载荷、压痕深度和爆破压力。这些简化的方程可以直接用于管道评估和暴露于凹痕的 RTP 管道的操作。此外，本文的结果将有助于进一步证明 RTP 作为石油和天然气行业新的无腐蚀风险运输系统。