Reliability and cold resistance of thin-walled structures at low ambient temperatures

The authors propose to determine the reliability of metal structures (major pipelines, reservoirs, etc.) at low ambient temperatures in terms of the cold resistance criterion by using the second critical temperature of the ductile-brittle transition. The model takes into account degradation of plastic properties of the material during the structure operation. The results of predicting a fracture temperature of a pressure vessel with an axial cracklike defect correlates with the experimental data.