The Evaluation Method Based on Artificial Neural Network for Integrated Re-liability of Oil Pipeline

The evaluation for reliability of long-distance oil pipelines is urgent requirement for pipeline's owner. To analyze the reliability of oil pipeline, the traditional methods of the evaluation for reliability, based on the theory of reliability and supposal of failure rate, regard the pipeline as a system of series connection or parallel connection. The failure rate is used to represent pipeline's reliability. The reliability based on statistic data is unpractical for pipeline's design, inspection and maintenance. The paper shows six imperfections through analyzing above method. The paper puts forward a new concept of integrated reliability. The new concept takes the more factors related pipeline's design, operation and maintenance into consideration. The new method based on artificial neural network is more practical than the traditional ones. The approach and steps to establish analytic model have been given in the paper.