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Recent Results
Research on Composite Repair Systems
PRCI has considerable research underway to evaluate the capability of composite repair systems to meet the needs of the pipeline industry. The work began in 2008 with two projects that addressed initial member interests. One developed a survey of the state of the art in commercially available composite repair techniques. The other began a long-term assessment of the performance of several commercially-available composite systems to repair corrosion in buried pipelines for up to ten years. This test program is being conducted at the Stress Engineering Services, Inc. field testing facility near Houston, Texas on joints of buried line pipe subjected to simulated operating environments covering a range of actual field conditions including worst case pressure and defect scenarios. Currently 13 systems are participating in this program that includes the repair of pipe samples with corrosion depths up to 75% of the pipe’s nominal wall thickness. Burst testing of select pipe joints is conducted on an annual basis to provide a measure of the composite systems performance at interim times during the extended test period. Additionally, last year PRCI began a project to examine the usefulness of composite repair systems to reinforce mechanical damage; this work is now nearing completion and has evaluated nine different composite systems. This year, PRCI member companies approved two additional projects to evaluate commercially-available composite systems for subsea repairs and for reinforcing vintage girth welds.
Key Results
These series of projects demonstrate industry’s increasing interest in expanding the number of cost effective repair and reinforcement alternatives, along with the broader application of composite repair systems to address pipeline integrity management requirements.