Comparison of Pipeline Girth Weld Defect Acceptance at the Onset of Yielding According to CSA Z662 and EPRG Guidelines

Within a stress-based design context, different codified engineering critical assessment procedures are available for defect assessment. This paper aims at comparing the recently updated EPRG Tier 2 guidelines with the Canadian CSA Z662 Annex K procedure. Therefore, the requirements for both procedure are discussed and the maximum allowable defect dimensions are graphically compared. It is observed that the use of the EPRG guidelines is significantly more restricted in terms of steel grades and pipe geometry. However, within the limits of the EPRG’s applicability, the CSA procedure requires significantly more material testing, while resulting in (extremely) low defect acceptance.