Proceedings of the 2012 9th International Pipeline Conference IPC2012 September 24-28, 2012, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

IPC2012-90087

ASSESSMENT OF THE COMPLEXITY OF STRESS/STRAIN CONDITIONS OF X100 STEEL PIPELINE AND THE EFFECT ON THE STEEL CORROSION AND FAILURE PRESSURE PREDICTION
Luyao Xu Dept. of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada ABSTRACT In this work, a finite element (FE) model was developed to simulate the complex stress/strain conditions potentially exerted on the northern pipelines due to the synergism of internal pressure, soil strain and local stress/strain concentration at corrosion defects. The effects of pre-strain on corrosion of the steel and the pipeline failure pressure were investigated. Results demonstrated that a high intensity stress/strain field generates preferentially at the bottom of corrosion defect. The increase of operating pressure would increase the stress concentration at defect and the plastically deformed area. Both tensile and compressive soil strains increase the stress intensity and plastic deformation. Thus, a pipe containing corrosion defects or mechanical dents is susceptible to hoop cracking or local bulking under the tensile and compressive soil strains, respectively. Moreover, while an elastic strain enhances slightly the steel corrosion, the effect of plastic strain is much remarkable. In optimal pipeline design, the reliable risk assessment of high-strength steel pipelines should consider the corrosion enhancement and defect propagation under the complex stress/strain conditions. INTRODUCTION Development of high-strength steel pipeline technology would enable the pipeline industry to realize significant costsavings by reducing the pipe wall thickness and increasing the operating pressure to satisfy the construction of long-distance, large diameter and high operating pressure pipelines [1]. As a milestone in high-strength steel evolution, X100 steel exhibits a satisfactory combination of strength, toughness and weldability by an appropriate alloying treatment and the thermo-mechanical controlled processing. The steel has been used in projects in the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas in the recent years [2-4], where Frank Y. Cheng Dept. of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada

pipelines experience a high internal operating pressure and severe environmental conditions, e.g., significant ground movement, resulting in additional stresses/strains exerting on the pipe wall. Research to date has been conducted to investigate the reliability and integrity of X100 steel pipelines, such as pipeline wrinkling and collapse by internal and applied loadings, embrittlement of steel due to strain-aging, burst pressure, etc. [5-8]. However, a reliable assessment methodology for simulating the complex stress/strain conditions developed on the northern pipeline and determining the potential effects on the mechanical and corrosion properties of the steel as well as the pipeline failure pressure has been in lacking. In this work, a FE model was developed to simulate the stress/strain conditions potentially developed on the northern pipelines due to the synergism of internal pressure, soil-induced strain and local stress/strain concentration at corrosion defects. The effect on corrosion of the steel and the pipeline failure pressure was investigated by material testing and corrosion measurements. It is anticipated that this research provides an reliable method for the optimal pipeline design and risk assessment with the considerations of corrosion enhancement and defect propagation under complex stress/strain conditions. EXPERIMENTAL Specimens used in this work were cut from a sheet of X100 steel pipe wall along the circumferential direction, with a chemical composition (wt%): C 0.07, Mn 1.76, S 0.005, Si 0.1, P 0.018, Ni 0.154, Cr 0.016, Mo 0.2, V 0.005, Cu 0.243, Al 0.027, and Fe balance. The specimens were machined into rod bar, as shown in Fig. 1. Prior to test, the specimens were ground up to 1000 grit silicon carbide paper, and then rinsed with deionized water and degreased in acetone.

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The test solution was a near-neutral pH NS4 solution, which has been used widely to simulate the electrolyte trapped under disbonded coating. The solution contained 0.483 g/L NaHCO3, 0.122 g/L KCl, 0.181 g/L CaCl2.H2O and 0.131 g/L MgSO4.7H2O. Prior to test, the solution was purged with 5% CO2 balanced with N2 gas for 1 h to achieve an anaerobic and near-neutral pH condition (pH=6.8). The gas flow was maintained throughout the test. Material testing was performed by a Bose Electroforce dynamic materials test system according to ASTM E8-04 standard at a strain rate of 1 -3/s for stress-strain test and 10 1 -4/s for corrosion potential monitoring. Specimens used for 10 tensile tests were pre-strained with 0%, 0.985%, 2.262% and 3.918%, respectively. The percent of reduction in area (RA%) was calculated after test. Corrosion potential was monitored during tensile test through a Solartron 1280C electrochemical workstation, where the steel specimen was used as working electrode (WE), a saturated calomel electrode (SCE) as reference electrode (RE) and a carbon rod as counter electrode (CE), as shown in Fig. 2. All the tests were performed at ambient temperature (~22 oC). The effect of temperature on the testing is being conducted in authors laboratory. It is expected that there is remarkable effect of temperature on corrosion of the steel. The FE analysis of the elasto-plastic solid stress/strain distribution on a pipe containing a corrosion defect was carried out using Comsol Multiphysics 4.2a software. As shown in Fig. 3, the length of pipe model is 2000 mm, with the outer diameter of 812.8 mm and wall thickness 19.1 mm. This may not be the actual geometry of a pipe, and used here for research purpose. The length of the corrosion defect is 200 mm with various depths. Due to symmetry in load and geometry, the FE analysis included a quarter of the pipe only. The internal pressures of the pipe were set as 15, 20 and 25 MPa, which were 46, 62 and 77% of specified minimum yielding strength (SMYS), respectively. These values represent the currently used operating pressures of pipelines. A 0.2% tensile and compressive strain was applied on pipe along the longitudinal direction to simulate the soil induced strain due to ground movement, which is usually in the range of 0-2.5%. RESULTS Mechanical tests Fig. 4 shows the engineering stress-strain curves of X100 steel specimens with various pre-strains. It is seen that both yield strength (y) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of the steel increase, and the fracture strain decreases with the amount of pre-strain. Moreover, there is an apparent strain-hardening beyond y on the specimen free of pre-strain, while the strainhardening phenomenon is not observed on other three specimens under various pre-strains. Fig. 5 shows the percentages of the change in y, UTS and fraction strain as a function of pre-strain. It is seen that y and UTS increase by 11.4% and 5.7%, respectively, when the prestrain increases from 0 to 3.918%. However, the fracture strain

reduces by 25.2%. It is clear that a small percentage increase of the steel strength is accompanied with a remarkable reduction in ductility. Corrosion potential measurements Fig. 6 shows the corrosion potential variation of the prestrain-free steel specimen measured during dynamic tensile test. It is seen that the stress-time plot is linear first, followed by a curved relation, representing the elastic and plastic deformation stages, respectively. The potential-time plot is featured with a sudden drop negatively of corrosion potential at the yielding point. In the elastic deformation stage, corrosion potential drops by 2.6 mV, and this value increases to 15.8 mV in the plastic deformation stage. Thus, compared to elastic deformation, there is a more remarkable effect of plastic deformation on corrosion of the steel. FE Analysis of the stress/strain distribution of a pipe with corrosion defect Fig. 7 shows the stress distribution simulated by the developed FE model on the steel pipe containing a corrosion defect (11.46 mm in depth) under a synergistic effect of various internal pressures and soil strains. It is needed to point out that, although the simulated corrosion defect seems too deep for a new pipeline, this work would provide an insight how the defect would propagate under complex stress/strain conditions. The shallow, small defects are also actually simulated and investigated. It is seen that the stress distribution around the corrosion defect is non-uniform. The high stress region up to 700-900 MPa is concentrated at the bottom of the defect, and propagates along both longitudinal and hoop directions with the increase of internal pressure and soil pre-strain. It may result in a rapid fracture if the local stress reaches the high stress. Moreover, the stress intensity is much higher in the presence of soil strain than that without pre-strain, no matter the tensile or compressive one. Fig. 8 shows the simulated plastic deformation distribution on the steel pipe under containing a corrosion defect (11.46 mm in depth) under various internal pressures and soil strains, where the red color represents the plastically deformed region, and blue for the elastically deformed region. It is obvious that plastic deformation preferentially occurs at the bottom of the corrosion defect, and propagates along both longitudinal and hoop directions with the increase of internal pressure. The plastically deformed area developed in the presence of soil strain is larger than that without soil strain. Furthermore, the presence of a tensile soil strain results in the propagation of the plastically deformed area along the hoop direction, while the compressive soil strain causes the plastic deformation to concentrate at the defect. Fig. 9 shows the stress distribution determined by FE of the inner and outer surfaces of the steel pipe in the presence and absence of a corrosion defect with 20% wall loss depth, respectively, where outer-defect refers to the base of the defect if the corrosion defect is present. It is seen that, in the

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absence of corrosion defect, there is little difference of stresses on the inner and outer surfaces, and the stress increases with the internal pressure. When the corrosion defect is present, the stress at the base of the defect is much higher than that of the inner surface of the pipe. When the corrosion depth is up to 80% wall loss depth, the stress distributions on the inner and outer surfaces of the steel pipe are shown in Fig. 10. It is seen that the stresses of the inner and outer surfaces of pipe with a defect are much higher than those in the absence of a defect. Moreover, apparent yielding points are observed in both curves. DISCUSSION Effect of plastic strain on mechanical properties of the steel The applied pre-strains in this work, i.e., 0%, 0.985%, 2.626% and 3.918%, represent the as-received state of the specimen and those higher than the yielding strain (0.388%) but smaller than the strain at UTS (4.002%). The elastic strain is not considered because it does not affect the mechanical properties and the corrosion behaviour, as demonstrated in authors previous work [8]. The measured stress-strain curves show that the applied pre-strain leads to a uniform plastic deformation and the consequent strain-hardening behaviour on the steel. The mechanism of strain-hardening is illustrated on the basis of dislocation-dislocation strain field interactions. Plastic deformation not only moves existing dislocations but also produces new dislocation, results in an increase in the dislocation density [9]. However, the ductility of steel, quantified by fracture strain in this work, is decreased with prestrain because of the increasing resistance to twinning and slipping during dislocation multiplication. The strain-hardening behavior is also described macroscopically through the true stress-strain curve from the onset of plastic deformation to the point at which necking begins by Ludwik-Hollomon equation [10]: (1) where is the stress, is the plastic strain, K is a constant, and is the strain-hardening exponent, depending on the nature of material. If a material has been subjected to pre-strain, the yield stress will be increased by a factor depending on the amount of pre-strain : (2) Apparently, an applied pre-strain would increase the strength of the steel. Effect of stress/strain on corrosion of the steel According to the theory of Mechano-electrochemical Interactions proposed by Gutman [11], the change of

electrochemical potential, is determined by:

, of a steel in elastic deformation

(3) where is the applied load (Pa), is the molar volume of the steel (m3/mol), z is the charge number, and F is Faradays constant. Therefore, an external load would decrease the equilibrium potential of the steel, and enhance its corrosion activity. Under a continuous tensile testing, the mechanoelectrochemical effect exerted on the specimen is expressed by: (4) where T0 is the electrochemical; corrosion potential of the steel under tensile testing, R is the ideal gas constant, T is absolution temperature, is the orientation-dependent factor equal to 0.40.5 for tensile deformation, is coefficient of approximately 1091011 cm-2, N0 is the initial dislocation density prior to plastic deformation, is the amount of plastic strain, and is the excessive pressure to elastic deformation limit. Thus, a plastic deformation would also shift the corrosion potential of steel negatively, enhancing its corrosion tendency at a higher level compared to elastic deformation. As shown in Fig. 6, a negative shift of corrosion potential was observed, with a 2.6 mV drop within the whole elastic deformation stage. Due to the slight change of corrosion potential, the corrosion enhancement by elastic strain is thus negligible. Actually, the tests were repeated several times in order to avoid the error introduced during test and potential reading. In plastic deformation, the enhanced corrosion activity of the steel is associated with the structural changes, i.e., multiplication of new dislocations and their movement to the surface to form slip steps and local irregularities. Consequently, the corrosion of the steel is enhanced significantly. Effect of corrosion defect on the local stress/strain distribution on pipe The presence of corrosion defects affects remarkably the local stress and strain distributions, and thus plays a critical role in the failure pressure prediction of pipelines. Generally, in the absence of corrosion defects, the stress of the inner surface of a pipe is higher than that of the outer surface [8]. In this work, a quantitative determination of the stress/strain distribution across the pipe wall in the presence of corrosion defects is conducted by the developed FE model. As shown in Figs. 7 and 8, a stress/strain concentration occurs at the base of the defect, even at a low internal pressure and in the absence of soil strain. When the corrosion depth is small (Fig. 9), the stress on the inner surface of pipe is much lower than that at the defect base, which is attributed to the

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stress concentrated at defect. With the increase of the corrosion depth (Fig. 10), the stress concentration is enhanced, resulting in the further separation of the stresses of the inner surface and that of the defect base, and the high stress field is primarily distributed around the defect. Risk assessment and failure pressure prediction of steel pipe containing corrosion defects in the presence of internal pressure and soil strain During operation in the field, pipelines experience both the hoop stress due to the internal operating pressure and the longitudinal stress/strain generated by the ground movement. The present work demonstrates that the soil-induced strain in the longitudinal direction, regardless of tensile or compressive, would increase remarkably the local stress/strain concentration of the defected pipelines, as shown in Figs. 7 and 8, where a strain energy is generated due to the application of external mechanical work. This additional strain energy decreases the demand of internal pressure to result in failure of the pipe, and consequently, the failure pressure decreases with the applied tensile or compressive pre-strain. In the presence of corrosion defects, the applied pre-strain increases the plastic deformation area, as seen in Fig. 8. Since the size of the plastic deformation area reflects the amount of internal energy absorbed, it is seen from Fig. 8 that the tensile pre-strain is more effective to result in internal strain than the compressive one, especially at a high operating pressure. Thus, the predicted failure pressure of pipeline under the tensile prestrain is smaller than that under a compressive pre-strain. Furthermore, pre-strain would harden the pipe steel kinematically and affect the distribution of failure pressure. Since this work focuses on the stress and strain determination at corrosion defect in the presence of pre-strain, a complex distribution of the hardening effect would not be covered. For pipeline safety, both hoop stress and soil stress/strain should be in the elastic range. However, the presence of corrosion defects or mechanical dents would lead to local plastic deformation under the synergism of operating pressure and ground movement. Thus, a defect-containing pipe would suffer from the hoop cracking under a tensile soil strain or local bulking under compressive strain, as identified by FE simulation of stress and strain distribution with the increasing pressure in Figs. 7 and 8. CONCLUSIONS A FE model is developed to simulate the stress/strain distribution with consideration of the synergism of internal operating pressure, soil strain and the presence of corrosion defects or mechanical dents. A high intensity stress field preferentially occurs at the bottom of defect. An increase of the operating pressure would increase the stress concentration at defect and the plastically deformed area. Moreover, both tensile and compressive soil strains increase the stress/strain concentration at the defect.

A pre-strain applied would increase the yield and ultimate tensile strengths, and decrease the ductility of the steel. Moreover, corrosion of the steel is enhanced by the increased plastic strain. While the effect of elastic strain on corrosion of steel is unapparent, there is a significant effect by plastic strain. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by Canada Research Chairs Program and Pipeline Engineering Center of the University of Calgary through the IPCF Research Grant Program. REFERENCES 1. K.T. Corbett, R.R. Bowen, C.W. Petersen, Inter. J. Offshore Polar Eng. 14 (2004) 7579. 2. B. Tanguy, T.T. Luu, G. Perrin, A. Pineau, J. Besson, Inter. J. Press. Vessels and Piping, 2005 3. D.H. Seo, S.H. Cho, C.M. Kim, J.K. Yoo, K.B. Kang, Proc. the 17th Inter. Offshore Polar Eng. Conf., Lisbon, Portugal, 2007. 4. A. Glover, J. Zhou, D. Horsley, N. Suzuki, S. Endo, J. Takehara, Proc. of the 22nd Inter. Conf. on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Eng., OMAE2003-37429, ASME, Cancun, Mexico, 2003. 5. J. Zhou, D. Horsley, B. Rothwell, Proc. the 7 th Inter. Pipeline Conf., 2006-10054, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 2006. 6. M. Besel, S. Zimmermann, Proc. the 8th Inter. Pipeline Conf., 2010-31664, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 2010. 7. H. Arslan, J. Hamilton, S. Lele, K. Minnaar, B. Albrecht, M.F. Cook, P. Wong, Proc. the 8th Inter. Pipeline Conf., 2010-31505, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 2010. 8. L.Y. Xu, Y.F. Cheng, Inter. J. Press. Vessels and Piping, 89 (2012) 75-84. 9. William D. Callister, Jr., David G. Rethwisch, materials science and engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 8 th edition, 2009 10. Marc Meyers, Krishan Chawla, Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2009 11. E.M. Gutman, Mechanochemistry of Materials, Cambridge Interscience Publishing, Cambridge, 1998.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the tensile specimen (unit: mm)

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15 10 5 Yield strength Ultimate tensile strength Fracture strain

Percentage change (%)

0 -5 -10 -15 -20 -25 -30 0.000

0.005

0.010

0.015

0.020

0.025

0.030

0.035

0.040

0.045

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of experimental set-up for tensile tests.

Strain

Fig. 5. The percentage changes in yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and fraction strain of X100 steel as a function of pre-strain.
1000 -0.715

Stress Potential

Plastic deformation starts

800

-0.720 Rupture -0.725

Potential (V,SCE)

Stress (MPa)

600 -0.730 400 -0.735

Fig. 3. FE modeling geometry of the pipe containing a corrosion defect, and the quarter-model is used in FE simulation as marked.
1000 900 800 700

200

-0.740

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

-0.745 1600

Time (Sec) 0% 0.985% 2.626% 3.918%

Fig. 6. Corrosion potential of X100 steel specimen free of pre-strain during tensile testing.

Stress (MPa)

600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0.00

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.10

0.12

0.14

0.16

Strain

Fig. 4. Engineering stress-strain curves of X100 steel specimen under various pre-strains.

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Fig. 9. Local stresses of the inner and outer surfaces of the steel pipe as a function of internal pressure in the presence and absence of a corrosion defect of 20% wall loss depth. Fig. 7. Distribution of stress on the steel pipe with a corrosion effect (top: no soil strain, middle: tensile soil strain, bottom: compressive soil strain. From left to right: operating pressure of 15, 20, 25 MPa).

Fig. 10. Local stresses of the inner and outer surfaces of the steel pipe as a function of internal pressure in the presence and absence of a corrosion defect of 80% wall loss depth.

Fig. 8. Distribution of plastic deformation on the steel pipe with a defect (top: no soil strain, middle: tensile soil strain, bottom: compressive soil strain. From left to right: operating pressure of 15, 20, 25 MPa).

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