Assessment of Pipeline Integrity Based on Successive Inspection Data

The ultimate objective of performing in-line inspections (ILI) in pipelines is to obtain data to use in establishing the current and future integrity of a given pipeline system. The estimation of the progress of corrosion based on successive inspections in time is preferred to a purely empirical approach providing that the ILI inspection uncertainties are considered in the analysis. This paper provides recommended treatments for assessing the remaining life of a pipeline and proposes a simple yet consistent model that allows the use of ILI data in predicting the future state of a pipeline based on the results of multiple ILI inspections and accounting for the ILI uncertainties.