Crack Growth Modeling and Life Prediction of Pipeline Steels Exposed to Near-Neutral pH Environments: Stage II Crack Growth and Overall Life Prediction

This investigation was initiated to provide governing equations for crack initiation, crack growth, and service life prediction of pipeline steels in near-neutral pH (NNpH) environments. This investigation develops a predictive model considering loading interactions occurring during oil and gas pipeline operation with underload-type variable pressure fluctuations. This method has predicted lifetimes comparable to the actual service lives found in the field. This is in sharp contrast with the predictions made by existing methods that are either conservative or inconsistent with the field observations. It has been demonstrated that large slash loads (R-ratio is 0.05), often seen during gas pipeline operation, are a major life-limiting factor and should be avoided where possible. Oil pipelines have shorter lifetime because of their more frequent pressure fluctuations and larger amplitude load cycles. The accuracy of prediction can be improved if pressure data with appropriate sampling intervals are used. The sampling interval error is much larger in the prediction of oil pipelines than gas pipelines because of their different compressibility but is minimized if the pressure sampling rate for the data is at or less than one minute.