The safety and serviceability of any pipeline and the related infrastructure (e.g. compressor stations, valve stations) depend on the capability of the structures to withstand the movements or even failures of the ground (i.e., the soil and the rock) during their lifetime. In the case of an onshore pipeline, this happens as the pipeline can be damaged, deformed, or even ruptured when the surrounding ground undergoes movements or failures. The main types of ground movements or failures affecting pipelines are geotechnical/environmental, such as landslides or slope failures, subsidence, frost heave or expansive clays, but in many areas of the world that are characterized by moderate or high seismicity, the ground movements may be seismic-related, such as seismic shaking, fault rupture at the ground surface, earthquake-triggered landslides, and/or liquefaction-induced settlements or lateral spreading.
Evidently, the aforementioned phenomena are becoming more complicated when the pipeline is crossing a sea or a lake, or when a flat onshore area is subjected to flooding phenomena. The current paper tries, with the help of some case histories and case studies, to shed some light to these interesting and challenging issues of soil-structure interaction, making in parallel a clear distinction between the induced permanent displacements and the applied external forces that are causing the pipeline distress, i.e. tensile rupture, compressive buckling, bending failure, etc. Issues of modelling, both analytical and numerical, and potential mitigation measures are also discussed.