Failure of large-diameter steel pipe with rolling scabs

Abstract

Russian pipelines employ large-diameter pipe of straight-seam, two-seam, and spiral-seam type (diameter up to 1420 mm, API strength class up to K65). The newest developments in the production of large-diameter (1020, 1220, and 1420 mm) straight-seam welded pipe (strength classes K38–K65 and X42–X80, wall thickness up to 52 mm, length up to 18 mm, and working pressure up to 22.15 MPa) is stepwise press shaping (the JCOE process), proposed by SMS Meer (Germany). The SMS Meer technology is widely used at Russian pipe plants (AO Vyksunskii Metallurgicheskii Zavod, AO Izhorskii Trubnyi Zavod, PAO Chelyabinskii Truboprokatnyi Zavod) and also plants in Russia, China, and India. However, the accident statistics for Russian pipelines show that stress corrosion of the pipe wall mainly occurs in pipelines of large diameter (700–1420 mm). More than 80% of pipeline failures associated with stress corrosion occur in pipelines of diameter 1020–1420 mm. Corrosion cracking of pipe walls may be attributed to three main factors: (1) poor steel quality and pipe defects in manufacturing (such as high residual stress, microcracks and micropeeling of the metal after shaping of the pipe blank, corrugation, scratches, scabs from the rolling process, and imperfections of the weld seams); (2) the presence of a corrosive medium and its access to the metal surface; (3) multicyclic fatigue and failure of the metal on account of pulsation of the working pressure within the pipe and hydraulic shocks. In Russian oil pipelines, failures due to production defects and assembly and installation problems are twice as frequent as in the United States and Europe. Therefore, careful study of pipeline failure due to production flaws is of great importance. In the present work, a mathematical approach is proposed to determining the critical pressure in the pipe at which elastoplastic failure of the pipe will occur at rolling scabs accompanied by a scratch on the pipe’s outer surface. The results may be used in failure diagnostics of large-and medium-diameter steel pipe for major delivery pipelines and transfer pipelines.