PR-335-173816-R01 Validation of In-Situ Methods for Material Property Determination

For various reasons, many pipeline operators have missing or incomplete records for portions of their transmission pipeline assets. Information that is vital to the safe operation of a pipeline, such as material grade, may be unknown and recently proposed regulation is driving the need to either verify the material properties of these undocumented sections of piping or to replace them entirely with known materials. New technologies have shown promise and promoted the ability to predict strength and toughness values of typical pipeline steels. Commonly employed and non-proprietary tools and methods for data collection were referenced in PRCI project NDE-4C (report PR-214-123743-R01); however, no detailed protocol was identified for employing these tools and the variability between lab and field measured values were not defined. This project developed a field protocol for collecting the data necessary to apply the NDE-4C algorithms and then evaluated this methodology, along with other proprietary “in-the-ditch” NDE methods. This report summarizes the test protocol applied and performance results from the different techniques applied.