Full Scale Sour Fatigue Testing With Dense Phase Gases

Author(s):  
Pedro M. Vargas ◽  
Ben Crowder ◽  
Weiwei Yu ◽  
Sam Mishael ◽  
Keith Armstrong

The petrochemical industry is very interested in the sour service fatigue performance of girth welded steel pipes. As a result several papers are published every year addressing this issue, and several Joint Industry Projects (JIP) are currently underway addressing different aspects of sour service performance of steel pipelines. To date research work has focused on quantifying the fatigue performance via small scale specimens due to the difficult and danger in dealing with H2S. Currently a JIP is underway that promises to provide full scale fatigue performance of pipeline welds under sour service. This paper documents the knockdown-factor-on-life (KD) determination for full scale sour service testing. In an industry first, a very difficult full scale sour service test was performed: 1) High Pressure, 2) High content of H2S, 3) Dense phase gases with ultra low water content (less than 400 ppm), and 4) Loading rate of 0.01 Hz. The loading was applied in full longitudinal tension. The full scale sour tests are compared with full scale in-air tests to obtain the knockdown factor. Resource constraint limited the number of full scale tests to 3. The main objective of the tests for the practical application was to ensure that the usage of crack growth based knock-down factors, i.e. the use of Fatigue-Crack-Growth-Acceleration-Factor (FCGAR) from small scale fracture mechanics specimens, was reasonable and conservative. Some additional comparisons are done with crack-growth based knockdown factors that may help explain the effect of the ultra-low water concentration. Knockdown factors from small scale crack growth specimens, Fatigue-Crack-Growth-Acceleration-Factor = 60 (FCGAR), are significantly higher than the full scale results, KD = 7. The ultra-low-water dense phase gases do not pit the surface, thus leaving the initiation life relatively intact. The knockdown factor for the full scale test is then mostly the result of the accelerated crack growth that occurs once a macro-crack nucleates.

2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramgopal Thodla ◽  
J. R. Gordon ◽  
Feng Gui

The effect of reeling on the fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) behavior of welded pipe was investigated both in-air as well as in sour environment. The FCGR behavior of the reeled pipe in various notch locations, such as parent pipe (PP), weld center line (WCL), and heat affected zone (HAZ), did not exhibit any effect of reeling (i.e., the properties in the strained and aged conditions were similar to the as-fabricated welds). Frequency scan FCGR tests in sour environment (pH = 5/0.0031 MPa H2S) exhibited maximum FCGR in the range of 10× to 35× higher than the in-air values at frequencies in the range of 3–1 mHz and 3× to 5× at frequencies in the range of 0.3 Hz (risers). In sour service, WCL exhibited better fatigue performance than the PP and HAZ in all conditions. Fatigue performance of PP and WCL was independent of reeling. The poorest fatigue performance was observed in unstrained HAZ. Fatigue performance of HAZ extrados (side last strained in compression) and intrados (side last strained in tension) was similar and better than unstrained HAZ. It was also found that the FCGR in sour environments was controlled by the internal hydrogen due to bulk charging from the sour environment. The overall conclusion is that reeling has no detrimental effect on sour service fatigue crack growth behavior, i.e., sour service fatigue performance of reeled pipe is the same as unreeled pipe.


Author(s):  
Ramgopal Thodla ◽  
Robin Gordon ◽  
Feng Gui

The effect of reeling on the fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) behavior of welded pipe was investigated both in-air as well as in sour environment. The FCGR behavior of the reeled pipe in various notch locations parent pipe (PP), weld center line (WCL), heat affected zone (HAZ) did not exhibit any effect of reeling (i.e. the properties in the strained and aged condition was similar to the as-fabricated welds). Frequency scan FCGR tests in sour environment (pH = 5/0.46psia H2S) exhibited maximum KDF’s in the range of 10× to 35× at frequencies in the range of 3 mHz to 1 mHz and 3× to 5× at frequencies in the range of 0.3Hz (Risers). In sour service WCL exhibited better fatigue performance than the parent pipe and HAZ in all conditions. Fatigue performance of parent pipe and WCL was independent of reeling. The poorest fatigue performance was observed in unstrained HAZ. Fatigue performance of HAZ extrados and intrados were similar and better than unstrained HAZ. It was also found that the FCGR in sour environments was controlled by the internal hydrogen due to bulk charging from the sour environment. The overall conclusion is that, reeling has no detrimental effect on sour service fatigue crack growth behavior i.e. sour service fatigue performance of reeled pipe is the same as unreeled pipe.


Author(s):  
Craig Taylor ◽  
Sreekanta Das ◽  
Laurie Collins ◽  
Muhammad Rashid

Very few studies have been conducted concerning fatigue in steel line pipe and fewer using full-scale testing. Further, at the time of this study, no research on full-scale testing was available in open literature regarding fatigue behavior of line pipe with longitudinal cracks, despite being considered more critical than the line pipe with cracks oriented in the circumferential direction. In the current research work, fatigue crack growth was investigated in NPS 20, API 5L X-70 grade, electrical resistance welding (ERW) straight-seam steel line pipes in the base metal and at the weld seam for various orientations. It was found that there was no significant difference between fatigue crack growth in the base metal and at the weld seam for the tested stress ratio. Increasing the angle of inclination of the crack with respect to the weld line was found to decrease the rate of fatigue crack growth due to a decrease in the mode I stress component. Finally, it was observed that despite the difference in fatigue crack growth rates, the crack aspect ratios were nearly identical for all cracks at the same crack depth.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Dinovitzer ◽  
Sanjay Tiku ◽  
Morvarid Ghovanlou ◽  
Mark Piazza ◽  
Thomas Jones

1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinji Konosu ◽  
Tomohiro Kishiro ◽  
Ogi Ivano ◽  
Yoshihiko Nunoya ◽  
Hideo Nakajima ◽  
...  

The structural materials of the coils of superconducting magnets utilized in thermonuclear fusion reactors are used at liquid helium (4.2 K) temperatures and are subjected to repeated thermal stresses and electromagnetic forces. A high strength, high toughness austenitic stainless steel (12Cr-12Ni-10Mn-5Mo-0.2N) has recently been developed for large, thick-walled components used in such environments. This material is non-magnetic even when subjected to processing and, because it is a forging material, it is advantageous as a structural material for large components. In the current research, a large forging of 12Cr-12Ni-10Mn-5Mo-0.2N austenitic stainless steel, was fabricated to a thickness of 250 mm, which is typical of section thicknesses encountered in actual equipment. The tensile fatigue crack growth properties of the forging were examined at liquid helium temperature as function of specimen location across the thickness of the forging. There was virtually no evidence of variation in tensile strength or fatigue crack growth properties attributable to different sampling locations in the thickness direction and no effect of thickness due to the forging or solution treatment associated with large forgings was observed. It has been clarified that there are cases in which small scale yielding (SSY) conditions are not fulfilled when stress ratios are large. ΔJ was introduced in order to achieve unified expression inclusive of these regions and, by expressing crack growth rate accordingly, the following formula was obtained at the second stage (middle range). da/dN = CJ ΔJmJ, CJ = AJ/(ΔJ0)mJ, where, AJ = 1.47 × 10−5 mm/cycle, ΔJ0 = 2.42 × 103N/m.


Author(s):  
Paulo Gioielli ◽  
Jaime Buitrago

Fatigue crack-growth modeling has a significant impact in establishing defect acceptance criteria for the inspection of fracture-critical, girth-welded components, such as risers and tendons. ExxonMobil has developed an experimental technique to generate crack-growth data, in actual welded tubulars, that account for the particular material properties, geometry, and residual stresses. The technique is fully compatible with conventional fracture mechanics models. It uses a series of pre-designed notches made around the welds on a production quality, full-scale specimen that is tested efficiently in a resonant fatigue setup. The crack development from notches is monitored during testing and evaluated post-mortem. Given its simplicity and high loading frequency, the technique provides growth data germane to the component at hand at a lower cost and faster than standard, small-scale tests.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Huan Li ◽  
Jinshan Li ◽  
Huang Yuan

A cyclic cohesive zone model is applied to characterize the fatigue crack growth behavior of a IN718 superalloy which is frequently used in aerospace components. In order to improve the limitation of fracture mechanics-based models, besides the predictions of the moderate fatigue crack growth rates at the Paris’ regime and the high fatigue crack growth rates at the high stress intensity factor ΔK levels, the present work is also aimed at simulating the material damage uniformly and examining the influence of the cohesive model parameters on fatigue crack growth systematically. The gradual loss of the stress-bearing ability of the material is considered through the degradation of a novel cohesive envelope. The experimental data of cracked specimens are used to validate the simulation result. Based on the reasonable estimation for the model parameters, the fatigue crack growth from moderate to high ΔK levels can be reproduced under the small-scale yielding condition, which is in fair agreement with the experimental results.


Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1427
Author(s):  
Amir Pourheidar ◽  
Luca Patriarca ◽  
Stefano Beretta ◽  
Daniele Regazzi

In this paper, a series of experimental investigations was performed on full-scale railway axles to analyze the fatigue crack growth behavior of EA4T steel under load spectrum derived from real operating conditions. The experimental results were compared to life predictions carried out adopting two models: (i) the conventional Nasgro equation and (ii) the cyclic R-curve concept implemented in the Modified Nasgro equation for describing the crack growth behavior of an arbitrary crack length. The results show that the life predictions performed by means of the Modified Nasgro equation coincide well with the experimental results with an underestimation of the residual lifetime less than 32%, while the traditional Nasgro equation leads to significant overestimation (≈120%) of the residual lifetime for load spectra close to the in service scenario.


Author(s):  
Weiwei Yu ◽  
Pedro M. Vargas ◽  
Ben Crowder ◽  
Sam Mishael ◽  
Ramgopal Thodla

One way generally accepted by industry to evaluate the effect of sour environment on fatigue performance of girth welds is by small scale testing in sour brines. These tests are commonly done at room temperature and pressure and therefore can only contain a maximum of 14.7psia of H2S in a gaseous phase. In comparison, very little has been published about fatigue performance in sour environments where negligible amounts or no water is present. Such condition can be found for pipelines serving in a “dry” sour environment (H2S and other gases in dense phase) with high H2S concentration. This paper documents both small scale fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) tests and S-N fatigue tests in a dense phase sour environment with ultra-low water content and high H2S concentration under high pressure. Fatigue life reduction factors were calculated from FCGR approach (with the name crack growth acceleration factor, CGAF) and S-N approach (with the name knockdown factor), respectively. Industry understanding today is that water is necessary for accelerating fatigue crack growth. Quite opposite to the expected effect of water content on crack growth, even ultra-low water content (<450ppm) resulted in high crack growth rates. Crack growth rates were comparable among tests with various water contents, all ultra low. Through limited testing, no temperature dependency on crack growth rate was identified. It is postulated that hydrogen dissociation due to high pressure and high concentration may be the cause for high crack growth rates on the absence of water. Small scale S-N tests on smooth specimens reveal that fatigue performance in ultra-low-water sour environments is the same as in air. We find that the dry gas environment dose not attack the metal surface preserving the fatigue performance.


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