PRCI

Newsroom

May 17, 2007

Letter from the PRCI President - 16th Biennial Joint Technical Meeting on Pipeline Research

Under the sponsorship of the Australian Pipeline Industry Association (APIA), through its Research and Standards Committee, the 16th Biennial Joint Technical Meeting on Pipeline Research held in Australia’s capital of Canberra was a great success. This was the first JTM to be held outside of the U.S. or Europe, and the Australian version was certainly the equal of those that have gone before it. With over 150 registrants, it was the largest JTM in history, with PRCI having 22 participants, including Board member Juha Vainikka from Gasum Oy in Finland. Those participating in the event included the CEO of the APIA, Cheryl Cartwright, its immediate past-president, Mark Harper, and Mick McCormick, one of the leading executives in the Australian Pipeline Industry.

The technical program featured a total of 36 papers, split evenly among the three organizations that comprise the JTM: PRCI, APIA, and the European Pipeline Research Group (EPRG). The program was framed around the following topical areas: Safety & Risk; Design; Fracture; Stress Corrosion Cracking; General Corrosion; Mechanical Damage; and High Strength Pipelines. A special thanks to PRCI members Gary Vervake (Design), Brian Rothwell (Safety & Risk), David Horsley (Fracture), and Scott Ironside (General Corrosion) who served as Technical Session Co-chairs. In addition to serving as Co-chairs, Gary, Brian, and David made presentations on projects in which they have been involved, and Joe Zhou presented two papers during the Meeting. In addition, Brian Leis, a long-time contributor both to PRCI and the JTMs, and a leading researcher with Battelle, served as a co-chair of the Mechanical Damage Session. Through the contributions of these valued and committed PRCI representatives, we were able to provide outstanding support to the meeting and to assure its ultimate success.

Several of the presentations, and the papers on which they were based, dealt with topics of particular interest to PRCI, particularly in terms of ongoing work to achieve the intended benefits, including:


  • Reliability-based Design (RBDA); key elements of future work to be considered include a pilot demonstration project, and extending RBDA to liquid pipelines.
  • Alternative Burnthrough Prediction Models; key elements of future work would be better models for pre-weld planning, and development of a new burnthrough base model to address cooling rate prediction, microstructural evolution, hydrogen diffusion, and a thermo-mechanical approach that uses temperature-dependent material properties.
  • Strain-based Design (SBD); key elements of future work would include consideration of the fact that pipe grade alone is not necessarily a good indicator of strain capacity, thereby enabling a focus on both high-strength steels and lower grade pipe, and response to the growing desire of regulators to have SBD codes and standards.
  • Survey and Review of Operator Practices for Managing Mechanical Damage; the key element of future work should be the integration of three primary components: 1) technologies (including those potentially from other industries); 2) operating procedures; and, 3) responsible human behavior (including communication and development of a culture of “ownership” of the problem, the solutions, and practices by all stakeholders).

In addition to the Meeting itself, while in Canberra we held discussions with our tripartite partners on the means to strengthen and implement our relationship as defined in the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2003, and we signed a collateral agreement with EPRG to create a “virtual JIP” on mechanical damage. Through this JIP, we will assure that opportunities for shared planning, information sharing, and, where feasible, funding can be identified to better address mechanical damage while avoiding duplication of effort.

Thank you to each member who sent a representative to the Meeting, and to those representatives for representing PRCI so well. Because of them, this remains a premier, world-class pipeline research convocation.

Best regards,
George Tenley
President

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