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Fatigue Of Drill Pipes Used In Horizontal Directional Drilling, Feibai Ma

Doctoral Dissertations

Fatigue is the most common cause of mini-HDD drill rod failure. It can occur at stress levels far below the normal operating stress in most drill stem components. Fatigue failures occur because the drill rod, after it has been forced into a curved path, undergoes a cyclic bending stress oscillating from tension to compression in concert with the other stress components caused by torque, thrust, or pullback.

When a rod breaks underground, there is considerable extra cost caused by the delay in “fishing” out the broken rod as well as the cost of replacing the rod. On the other hand, …