How Reliable Are the Current Testing Procedures for the Safety Assurance Against Crack Propagation in Seamless Gas Pipelines? Available to Purchase

The worldwide growing energy demand with the exploration of new gas fields has promoted the development of high toughness seamless pipeline steels which should sustain the increasing demands resulting from the complex loading situations. One of the most important prerequisites for safe installation and operation of long distance gas transmission pipelines is the detailed knowledge and characterization of their fracture performance for specific applications. However, recent industry experience has revealed concerns related to the limitations and reliability of current test methods for brittle-to-ductile transition evaluation. Regarding the transition temperature evaluation, the critical issues involve Drop-Weight Tear Testing (DWTT) and full-scale West-Jefferson (WJ) test applied to the smaller pipes with diameter less than 500mm. The DWTT leads frequently to invalid results in terms of abnormal fracture appearance and inverse fracture occurrence. It is still not clear if this behavior is only owed to a testing effect, which material characteristics cause it and how far it reflects the full-scale behavior. Similar observations were made for the West-Jefferson tests, which could not be assessed in the standard manner either. Again, the question was towards testing effects and the behavior of the pipeline transporting gaseous media remains unanswered. Therefore, this paper aims at identifying open questions on basis of a literature study and own experimental results and showing possible ways forward in demonstrating safety in design against propagating fracture.