To manage the integrity of corroded pipelines reliable estimates of the current and future corrosion growth process are required. They are often obtained from in-line inspection data by matching defects from two or more inspections and determining corrosion growth rates from the observed growth paths. In practice only a (small) subset of the observed defects are often reliably matched and used in the subsequent corrosion growth analysis. The information from the remaining unmatched defects on the corrosion growth process are typically ignored. Hence, all decisions that depend on the corrosion growth process such as maintenance and repair requirements and re-inspection intervals, are based on the information obtained from the (small) set of matched defects rather than all observed corrosion anomalies.
A new probabilistic approach for estimating corrosion growth from in-line inspection data is introduced. It does not depend on defect matching and the associated defect matching uncertainties. The reported defects of an inspection are considered from a population perspective and the corrosion growth is determined from two or more defect populations. The distribution of the reported defect sizes is transformed into the distribution of the actual defect sizes by adjusting it for detectability, false calls, and sizing uncertainties. The obtained distribution is then used to determine the parameters of the assumed gamma-distributed corrosion growth process in order to forecast future metal loss in the pipeline. As defect matching is not required all reported corrosion defects are used in the probabilistic analysis rather than the truncated set of matched defects. A numerical example is provided where two in-line inspections are analyzed.
