Proposed United States (U.S.) gas pipeline industry safety regulation changes were announced in 2016, many of which were prompted by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) incident findings over the last decade. Of special note is the proposed(1) new requirement in 49 CFR Part 192.607 to determine and verify the physical characteristics of any installed line pipe, valve, flange and component where material records are not available. To satisfy this requirement, Reliable, Traceable, Verifiable and Complete (RTVC) records will be needed in High Consequence Areas (HCA), Class 3 or Class 4 locations.

The industry has been developing in-situ techniques to measure pipe properties in lieu of other destructive approaches (e.g., cut-outs and tensile testing). Part 192.607(c) has proposed that any nondestructive method used to determine strength be able to produce results accurate within 10% of the actual value with 95% confidence. Furthermore, the operator must use methods, tools, procedures and techniques that have been independently validated by subject matter experts in metallurgy and fracture mechanics.

This paper will review the techniques available to meet this challenge and propose procedural applications to improve the repeatability and reliability of results.

Subject
Test methods, Seams, Material properties, Materials, Piping, Correlation, Surface hardness, Hardness testing, Pipelines, Hardness measurements, Steel, Hardness, Yield strength
Keywords:
procedure, NDE material verification, grade, yield strength determination, sampling, 192.607
© 2017 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
2017
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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