Girth welded pipes, such as those located offshore on platforms in the North Sea, are subjected to highly corrosive environment. The need to consider welding residual stresses in the assessment of the fitness for service and damages to these pipes when investigating local corrosion damages across a welded region is therefore important for the operators of the platforms and the manufacturers of the pipes. This paper presents a review of work carried out to ascertain the welding residual stresses present within a thin-walled girth welded pipe mock-up made from steel API 5LX Grade 52 before and after reduction of the wall thickness. The mock-up was manufactured to replicate typical pipes used to convey gas, oil and water through the platforms. The mock-up was of diameter 30” and of thickness 19mm. The incremental deep hole drilling (iDHD), contour, hole drilling, XRD, and ultrasonic technique were applied to characterise the residual stresses in the weld and heat affected zone of the specimen. The residual stresses were then measured during the manufacture of a groove located on the weld at the ID and were compared to an FE prediction. Ultrasonic measurements were then carried out on the outer surface of the pipe and show a significant increase in the residual stress and could be used to monitor the changes in the residual stress caused by internal corrosion.

The presence of high magnitude residual stresses in welded components causes material degradation, local yielding and plastic deformation. Their presence provides the potential for premature failure and compromises the integrity of a structure. This paper presents a review of work carried out to ascertain the residual stresses present within T-section specimens, made from ferritic steel, in their as-welded condition. The standard and incremental deep hole drilling (DHD and iDHD) techniques, the neutron diffraction (ND) and the contour method were applied to characterise the residual stresses in the regions in and around the two fillet welds of the specimens and the surrounding parent material within which the balancing residual stresses needed to be measured. The results of these measurements are presented and compared to highlight agreements and discrepancies in the measured residual stress distributions using these different techniques. A compendium of measurements at a similar location in various T-sections and their comparison with the BS7910 standard show that the measured longitudinal distributions are similar despite the observed scatter. Finally, this paper briefly attempts to investigate and discuss the technical challenges identified when applying the contour method to complex geometry components. The constraint of the specimen during the wire electro-discharge machining (EDM) process, the quality of the wire EDM cut made and the analysis of the raw data for the conversion into residual stresses directly affect the accuracy of the contour method results. The identification and investigation of these challenges lead to continuous improvements of the contour method procedure and reduce uncertainties of the measurement.

Girth welded pipes such as those located offshore on platforms in the North Sea are subjected to highly corrosive environment. The need to consider welding residual stresses in the assessment of the fitness for service and damages to these pipes when investigating local corrosion damages across a welded region is therefore important for the operators of the platforms and the manufacturers of the pipes. This paper presents a review of work carried out to ascertain the welding residual stresses present within a thin-walled girth welded pipe mock-up made from steel API 5LX Grade 52. The mock-up was manufactured to replicate typical pipes used to convey gas, oil and water through the platforms. The mock-up was of diameter 762mm and of thickness 19mm. The incremental deep hole drilling (iDHD) technique and the contour method were applied to characterize the residual stresses in the weld and heat affected zone of the specimen. The results of these measurements are presented and compared to highlight agreements and discrepancies in the measured residual stress distributions using these different techniques. Most residual stress measurement methods are limited in terms of their stress and spatial resolution, the number of measurable stress tensor components and their quantifiable measurement uncertainty. In contrast, finite element simulations of welding processes provide full field distributions of residual stresses, with results dependent on the quality of the input conditions available. As measurements and predictions are not often the same, the true residual stress state is therefore difficult to determine. In this paper, through-thickness residual stress measurements are made using the contour and iDHD methods and these residual stresses measured using the iDHD technique are then used as input to a residual stress mapping technique provided within a finite element analysis to reconstruct the residual stress field in the whole specimen. The technique is applied iteratively to converge to a balanced solution which is not necessarily unique. The solution can then be reused for further simulations and residual stress analyses, such as corrosion simulation. Results of the reconstruction are presented here.

Most residual stress measurement methods are limited in terms of their stress and spatial resolution, number of stress tensor components measured and measurement uncertainty. In contrast, finite element simulations of welding processes provide full field distributions of residual stresses, with results dependent on the quality of the input conditions. Measurements and predictions are often not the same, and the true residual stress state is difficult to determine. In this paper both measurements and predictions of residual stresses, created in clad nuclear reactor pressure vessel steels, are made. The measurements are then used as input to a residual stress mapping technique provided within a finite element analysis. The technique is applied iteratively to converge to a balanced solution which is not necessarily unique. However, the technique aids the identification of locations for additional measurements. This is illustrated in the paper. The outcomes from the additional measurements permit more realistic and reliable estimates of the true residual state to be made. The outcomes are compared with the finite element simulations of the welding process and used to determine whether there is a need for additional input to the simulations.

Optimising the structural integrity of an oil and gas pipeline is hugely important for its productivity and hence profitability. The structural integrity of a pipeline is influenced by factors such as: stress (i.e. applied and residual), material properties, environment, and the size and orientation of contained flaws. For example, whilst in operation, the integrity of a pipeline can be extended by reducing its applied stresses e.g. the flow and pressure of the oil and gas running within. Prior to operation however the integrity of the pipeline can easily be extended by reducing the residual stresses generated during installation or even “negatively pre-loading” the pipeline using residual stresses to help cancel out some of the applied stresses. Therefore understanding the distribution of residual stresses within a pipeline can be of great benefit to Oil and Gas engineers. In this paper, complementary residual stress measurement techniques are used to obtain near surface and through-thickness residual stress distributions in a fully circumferential butt welded pipe. The deep hole drilling (DHD) method was used to obtain the axial and hoop residual stresses along radial lines through the pipe wall. Near surface measurements on the outer surface of the pipe were obtained using the incremental centre-hole drilling (ICHD) method. The measurements were made only at limited points in and adjacent to the circumferential weld. In order to estimate the complete residual stress field present in the pipe, a mapping procedure utilising a finite element (FE) method was implemented. This entailed introducing the measured residual stresses into a FE model of the pipe as an initial condition and allowing redistribution. Naturally, the stresses at the measurement locations should remain at their initial values. Consequently, the method was developed to allow redistribution while retaining the measured values. The paper provides these estimates of the full residual stress state present in the pipe based on this mapping procedure. The FE model was then used to simulate the influence of various sizes of flaw on the mapped residual stresses field. An assessment of the acceptability of areas of loss of the wall thickness in internally pressurised pressure vessels was then performed.

Through thickness measurement of residual stresses is now undertaken routinely for complex welded components. To predict residual stress distributions finite element (FE) simulations of the welding of the component are also carried out using well established codes, with the simulations sometimes validated via measurements. Measurements are usually undertaken at locations where it is judged that the peak residual stresses occur. Therefore comparisons are often confined to limited locations. But this raises the question whether the simulated residual stresses at other locations are correct. To explore this, the work reported in this paper relies on introducing measured residual stresses into an elastic FE model of the welded component. These stresses are mapped into the model at the measurements locations. Then the FE analysis redistributes the initial stresses, with an iterative process introduced to ensure that the measured stresses are retained during redistribution. Examples are shown where agreement between measured and weld model predictions are good at the measurement locations and both the measured and weld model predictions satisfy global equilibrium. However, they do not agree at other locations. It is argued that additional measurements at other locations are required to validate the FE models of welding processes.