CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 26, 2012 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at: www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Valerio Cozzani, Eddy De Rademaeker Copyright © 2012, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., ISBN 978-88-95608-17-4; ISSN 1974-9791 An Observational Analysis of Seismic Vulnerability of Industrial Pipelines Giovanni Lanzano* a , Ernesto Salzano b , Filippo Santucci de Magistris a , Giovanni Fabbrocino a . a University of Molise Region, S.A.V.A. Department, StreGa Laboratory, Termoli, CB (IT). b Istituto di Ricerche sulla Combustione, CNR, Napoli (IT). giovanni.lanzano@unimol.it Industrial plants are complex systems that need stringent requirement for structural safety, as large amount of toxic and flammable materials are often handled and consequences of failures can affect wide surrounding areas. Prediction and prevention of possible accidental scenarios, triggered by the interaction of natural hazard such as earthquakes with industrial equipment depend upon the reliability of available tools for structural design and assessment. In this paper, attention is focussed on industrial pipelines and on damages suffered by such structures during recent earthquake sequences. Available data were classified on the basis of different correlated issues as seismological, geotechnical, structural and performance parameters, in order to assess the main factors affecting their seismic vulnerability. Results provided a preliminary correlation of pipeline performance and relevant earthquake intensity measures. Some remarks on the loss of containment, which has been largely demonstrated as the main issue for qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, in relation with relevant failure mechanisms, are also provided. 1. Introduction A key aspect in the broad topic of the safety of industrial plants is their seismic vulnerability. In particular, large efforts are required to ensure the structural safety of the equipment when large amount of toxic and flammable substances are stored or manipulated. However, the seismic response of industrial structures was sometimes not satisfactory in some strong recent earthquakes, e.g. Northridge, California, 1994 (Lau et al., 1995) and L’Aquila, Italy, 2009 (Grimaz and Maiolo, 2010). This circumstance strengthens the need to develop and enhance the engineering framework and to tackle all technical issues related to design and to the performance assessment of industrial structures. In particular, the concurrent action of different disciplines has to be recommended: the geotechnical engineering to study the soil/structure interaction during the seismic event; the structural engineering to study the construction technology and the damage mechanisms; the hydraulic engineering to evaluate eventual dynamic effects of the transported fluid; the industrial engineering to relate the damage with consequences and losses due to an eventual failure (QRA). Moreover, basic knowledge of seismological and geological settings is also needed, in order to estimate the seismic parameters and its degree of uncertainty. In the present paper, an observational analysis of earthquake damage is discussed with specific reference to pipelines. Preliminary fragility formulations for pipelines are also discussed as a sample outcome of the approach. The fragility formulation refers to pipelines and damages induced by strong motion shaking (SGS). A cut-off intensity measure obtained from a probit