Abstract
Gas transmission pipeline operators increasingly rely on Electro-Magnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) technology to reliably detect, identify and size stress corrosion cracking (SCC) anomalies in their pipeline system. However, scheduling EMAT in-line inspection (ILI) on every pipeline in the system is not always practicable or achievable in an expeditious manner. A means of conducting a preliminary assessment of the SCC threat on pipelines without EMAT ILI data in an objective and quantifiable manner is useful for understanding the threat level and for prioritizing or deciding on outstanding EMAT inspections. A wealth of system-specific SCC field data from historical integrity excavations across the pipeline system typically exists in a pipeline operator’s dataset and can be readily leveraged for quantitatively estimating the SCC threat reliability in other, similar (“like-in-kind”) parts of the pipeline system. This system-specific data, based on actual SCC findings from integrity excavations, is an improved and more granular alternative to applying industry-wide SCC statistics to estimates of SCC reliability levels on pipelines without EMAT ILI data.
This paper presents a robust and direct limit state approach for estimating the SCC reliability level in pipelines that have not yet had an EMAT ILI completed by leveraging system-wide SCC field findings from historical integrity excavations.
