As a major threat to the pipeline integrity, erosion is commonly found in pipelines when their high flow rates are combined with high solid particles content. Erosion may cause metal loss to the pipeline and in extreme cases lead to pipeline failure. Therefore, understanding and estimating the ranges of possible erosion rates is the key to maintaining the safe operation of pipelines. Erosion models used among pipeline operators are usually deterministic, which faces challenges when some data are uncertain (or unknown). In this study, two series of Monte-Carlo simulations were designed and carried to extract the knowledge from two widely used erosion models (i.e. SPPS and DNV RP O501). The erosion rates of millions of different operation conditions were studied and summarized, and the results are combined and populated into a database, a visualization approach and a classification tree. This study provides an intuitive and probabilistic way for pipeline operators to estimate the pipeline erosion rate even with limited data and missing input parameters.

Subject
Erosion models, Pipeline operations, Materials, Piping, Visualization, Modeling, Flow velocity, Pipelines, Probability, Density, Fluids, Erosion, Hardness
Keywords:
classification tree, visualization database, pipeline erosion, erosion model
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2021
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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