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.

Abstract. The structural integrity of an oil and gas pipeline is increasingly factored into the design of new installations to ensure that operating risks are maintained low. In addition, the life extension of existing assets beyond their original anticipated design life, as a result of the current oil price environment and the need to optimize field development expenditure, is an ongoing challenge. Operators would like to extend pipeline service life, while many of the technologies required for the validation of their ongoing condition are not yet mature enough to provide confidence that this is a viable strategy. One of the issues considered as a key threat to pipeline integrity is corrosion. Therefore understanding the distribution and redistribution of residual stresses within a pipeline affected by corrosion can be of great benefit. A way to monitor in-situ the pipeline residual stress is to use the ultrasonic (UT) technique. The paper aimed to assess and calibrate the US technique on a pipeline mock-up in the presence of a typical local corrosion damage mechanism. Contour, iDHD, ICHD, XRD and ultrasonic measurements were carried out before machining a flaw to produce an accurate FE model of the pipe. The residual stress was then measured during the manufacture of the flaw and was compared with the FE prediction. Ultrasonic measurements were then carried out on the outer surface of the pipe and show a significant increase in the residual stress. The Ultrasonic technique can therefore, be used to monitor the changes in the residual stress which may be caused by corrosion. IntroductionAcross the globe, 5 metric tons of steel are degenerated every second with the offshore industry. The main fault on pipelines in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico is caused by internal corrosion. About 67% of the global pipeline are now older than 20 year which is the minimum design life [1]. Guideline provides guidance to estimate the life of a component in the presence of a flaw, analytically or with finite element analysis [2]. The finite element analysis can be less conservative than the analytical solution and, therefore, increase the in-service time of the pipeline. In order to create a representative FE model of the pipeline, an accurate description of the weld residual stress is important. In this study, the Contour, the Incremental Deep Hole Drilling (DHD), the Incremental Center-Hole Drilling (ICHD) and XRD residual stress measurement techniques were employed and compared on an as-welded section of pipeline.In order to evaluate the life of a pipeline, the corrosion growth needs to be known. Ultrasonic technique is already used to measure the wall thickness of the pipes. This study, however, looks at the measure of the residual stress using ultrasound in an as-welded zone and in a zone with thinner wall thickness. To obtain this results the ultrasonic system needs to be first calibrated. The calibration can be done using a tensile test or using absolute residual stress values. In this study, the ultrasonic method was...

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.

This paper presents the residual stress measurements carried out on a t-section representative of a ring stiffened cylindrical structures. This paper presents the work carried out to ascertain the residual stresses present within a T-plate section representative of a ring stiffened cylindrical structures. The contour, the deep hole drilling (DHD) and the neutron diffraction (ND) methods were applied to determine the longitudinal component of residual stress in the weld toe of the fillet weld in the as-welded condition. The results of these measurements are presented and compared to highlight agreements and discrepancies in the measured residual stress distributions using these different techniques. Finally, non-destructive residual stress measurement using the ultrasonic (US) technique was carried out on the component. The ultrasonic measurement provides a relative measurement and usually requires a tensile test in order to determine the acoustoelastic constant and the time of flight in a stress-free state. The tensile test requires some material to be extracted from the component. The tensile test can be avoided if other residual stress measurement techniques are used for the calibration. After the calibration the US technique can be deployed on a full-scale ring stiffened cylindrical structures to detect abnormal variation in the residual stress field.

Low pressure electron beam welding offers the prospect of large increases in productivity for thick section welds in RPV steels. However, it is important to understand how this welding process affects the structural performance of the completed weld. This paper reviews and presents key results from a programme of weldment manufacture, materials characterisation, residual stress measurements, and finite element modelling of EB welds made in plate of three thicknesses, 30mm, 130mm, and 200mm, and in three steels: SA508 Gr 2, SA508 Gr 3 C1 1, and SA516 Gr 70.