Recent Development in High Strength Linepipe for Sour Environment Available to Purchase

This paper firstly summarizes the design concepts for controlling crack resistant property and mechanical properties of high strength linepipe steels for sour gas service. Optimum conditions of controlled rolling and accelerated cooling that balances crack resistant property and toughness were investigated. It was demonstrated that higher cooling rate in accelerated cooling process brings tremendous advantages for balancing toughness and strength by fine bainitic microstructure even for heavy wall thick pipes. Production results of high strength sour resistant linepipes were introduced. In order to increase strength grade of sour linepipes, further investigation was made using the steels with different microstructures. It was found that precipitation hardened ferrite-bainite steels have extremely high resistance against HIC even for Grade X80. Mechanical properties and microstructural characteristics of this newly developed steel were introduced in this paper.