The causes of longitudinal crack in gas pipeline during pressure were analyzed by means of mechanical property test, microstructure analysis, sem analysis and energy spectrum analysis. The results show that the leakage of L415M spiral submerged arc welded pipe is caused by the contact between the base material of steel pipe and low-melting copper alloy in the process of high temperature, resulting in the brittleness of liquid metal. Specifically, when the leakage site of the steel pipe is heated at an abnormal high temperature, copper penetration along the grain boundary causes embrittlement, strength reduction and crack along the grain boundary, finally leading to the crack and leak of the steel pipe.

The suspected circumferential weld defects found in the pipeline inspection process were tested and studied. It was found that there was slag inclusion in the girth weld at 9 o’clock, which had not been found in the early stage or in the laboratory nondestructive testing process. The defects are most likely due to incomplete slag removal between layers and low welding wire energy. There was a root crack at the 6 o’clock position of the weld, and the crack length was 10 mm, which was close to the original film and the detection result of excavation. The misjudgment of the field rebeat and the laboratory test results may be caused by the pits in the weld cover and the bottom weld. The crack is caused by the crystal crack formed along the middle of the columnar crystal during the solidification process of backing welding due to the increase of residual stress caused by the reduction of welding layers and the group stress caused by the steel tube.

When the natural gas pipeline is welding in service, the fast flowing medium with pressure in the pipe will take away a lot of heat, and the preheating temperature is not easy to be guaranteed, so it is easy to appear hydrogen-induced crack. In this paper, the in-service welding preheating temperature field of natural gas pipeline under the limit condition of unreduced volume was studied, and the pre-welding preheating test was carried out by using the medium frequency heating method. It is found that the temperature below the heating belt increases gradually with the increase of the intermediate frequency heating power, and the fitting shows a quadratic polynomial gradient. There are differences in preheating temperatures on the same circumference. The highest temperature mostly appears in the direction of 3 point of the pipeline, while the lowest temperature mostly appears in the direction of 0 point, which is related to the tightness of the heating belt, sunshine, blowing and other factors. In addition, the preheating temperature field of the pipeline in service is related to the gas flow in the pipeline. At the same heating power, the downstream temperature of the heating belt is higher than the upstream temperature at the same location, and the closer to the heating belt, the higher the temperature is. When the gas flow rate reaches 9.37m/s and the heating power is 160kW, the average measured temperature at 50mm upstream and downstream of the heating belt of Φ1016 pipeline is 107℃, and the average measured temperature at 50mm upstream of the heating belt is 71℃. When the gas flow rate reaches 8.91m/s and the heating power is 200kW, the average measured temperature at the downstream 50mm of the heating belt of Φ1219 pipeline is 72℃, the average measured temperature at the upstream 50mm of the heating belt is 52℃and the average measured temperature at the upstream 30mm of the heating belt is 71℃..

During the welding of in-service pipeline, natural gas is continuously transported in the pipeline, which maintains a high gas pressure. Therefore, the welding process is completed under strong cooling conditions, and welding delay crack is easy to occur. Preheating before welding and heat treatment after welding can effectively control the hardened microstructure, reduce the residual stress and ensure the welding quality. In this study, the influence of heating temperature on the bearing capacity of high steel grade pipe during in-service welding repair was studied. The high temperature tensile test was used to simulate the bearing capacity of the pipe under heating and high temperature environment. It is found that when the heating temperature is below 400°C, the pipe strength remains at the original level. With the increase of heating temperature, when the test temperature is higher than 400°C, the yield strength and tensile strength of the pipe decrease significantly. When the test temperature is 450°C, the yield strength and tensile strength of the material decrease by 15.8% and 11.1%, respectively, compared with the normal temperature, which are lower than the pipe standard requirements. Therefore, it is suggested that when the heat treatment temperature is higher than 400°C during in-service welding repair, it is necessary to consider reducing the pipeline pressure. At the same time, the box furnace heat treatment method was adopted to heat treat the pipe, and the tensile properties of the pipe after heat treatment were tested to analyze the bearing capacity of the pipe after heat treatment. It is found that when the heating temperature is higher than 700°C, the tensile properties of high grade pipeline steel pipe decrease sharply. It is suggested that when the heat treatment temperature is higher than 700°C, the risk assessment of the service safety of the heat treated pipeline should be carried out.

In this study, the performance test and defect anatomy analysis were carried out for a girth weld of the pipeline. The results of the girth weld tensile test, groove hammer break test and Vickers hardness test showed no obvious abnormality, and the impact toughness and bending test results were not ideal. In the conventional inspection process, it was found that there were tiny unfused girth welds at 6 o 'clock and 9 o 'clock positions, and the maximum direction size of defects on the wall thickness section was 1.57 mm. The defects at the position from 6 o 'clock to 7 o 'clock found by on-site X-ray detection were identified as the existing non-fusion defects by anatomical analysis, and should be considered as the root of incomplete welding defects that could not be completely eliminated during repair welding. The length and height of the defects are 9 mm and 1.38 mm.