Justification for Reducing In-Service Weld Inspection Delay Times for Liquid Pipelines
Authors: Boring Matt , Bongiovi Mike , Warman David , Kleeman Harold 
Published: November 2018

Welds that are made onto an operating pipeline cool at an accelerated rate as a result of the flowing pipeline contents cooling the weld region. The accelerated cooling rates increase the probability of forming a crack-susceptible microstructure in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of in-service welds. The increased risk of forming such microstructures makes in-service welds more susceptible to hydrogen cracking compared to welds that do not experience accelerated cooling.

It is understood within the pipeline industry that hydrogen cracking is a time-dependent failure mechanism. Due to the time-dependent nature and susceptibility of in-service welds to hydrogen cracking, it is common to delay the final inspection of in-service welds. The intent of the delayed inspection is to allow hydrogen cracks, if they were going to occur, to form so that the inspection method could detect them and the cracks could repaired. Many industry codes provide a single inspection delay time. By providing a single inspection delay time it is implied that the inspection delay time should be applied for all situations independent of the welding conditions or any other preventative measures the company may employee.

There are many aspects that should be addressed when determining what should be considered an appropriate inspection delay time and these aspects can vary the inspection delay time considerably. Such factors include the cooling characteristics of the operating pipeline, the welding procedure that is being followed, the chemical composition of the material being welded and if any preventative measures such as post-weld heating are applied.

The objective of this work was to provide an engineering justification for realistic minimum inspection delay times for different in-service welding scenarios. The minimum inspection delay time that was determined was based on modelling results from a previously developed two-dimensional hydrogen diffusion model that predicts the time to peak hydrogen concentration at any location within a weld HAZ. The time to peak hydrogen concentration was considered equal to the minimum inspection delay time since the model uses the assumption that if a weld was to crack the cracking would occur prior to or at the time of peak hydrogen concentration.

Several factors were varied during the computer model runs to determine the effect they had on the time to peak hydrogen concentration. These factors included different welding procedures, different material thicknesses and different post-weld heating temperatures. The post-weld heating temperatures were varied between 40 F (4 C) and 300 F (149 C). The results of the analysis did provide justification for reducing the inspection delay time to 30 minutes or less depending on the post-weld heating temperature and pipeline wall thickness. This reduction in inspection delay time has the potential to significantly increase productivity and reduce associated costs without increasing the associated risk to pipeline integrity or public safety.