ECA for Operation: Is Today’s Practice of Relying on SENB Instead of SENT Testing While Not Taking Internal Pressure Into Account Conservative? Available to Purchase

Today’s analytical equations that are the basis for most engineering critical assessments (ECA) are not currently able to account for the effect of internal pressure, and the industry does not have a common recognized procedure for assessing the integrity of pipelines for longitudinal strains in the plastic range during operation. An industry practice has therefore developed where more conservative SENB specimens are used to compensate for the current lack of ability of analytical equations to account for the effect of biaxial stress of in-service pipelines. This paper investigates whether current practice of using fracture mechanics data from SENB testing while ignoring internal pressure during operation is conservative, or whether non-conservative assessments may be the result.