Mechanism of Failure of Pipeline Steels in Sour Environment

Safety of transportation of oil and gas provides a guarantee for sustainable energy supply. The fracture of linepipe may lead to environmental catastrophe and significant economic losses. Hydrogen induced cracking (HIC), sulphide stress cracking (SSC) and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in various types of linepipe steels are phenomena that are responsible for the majority of linepipe failures. The information recently published by us and other researchers indicates that special textured steels can be resistant to both HIC and SCC. These findings create an emerging but completely unexplored opportunity to manufacture new generation of linepipe steels with highly improved resistance to two major type of pipeline failure. The proposed program will focus on designing new manufacturing processes for optimizing the texture and the grain-boundary structure of pipeline steel (X60 X65 and X65X70), based on a full understanding of the influence of thermo-mechanical processing on texture formation and the role of texture in steel performance in sour environment. This project will offer a novel approach towards the ultimate objective to enhance the steel performance by texture controlling of steel. In the proposed research we plan to cooperate with EVRAZ Inc and CANMET Materials Technology Laboratory to develop new processing technology for production of novel texture-modified linepipe steels, and finally transfer the related technology to Canadian manufacturing companies of linepipe steels.

Faculty Supervisor:

JERZY SZPUNAR

Student:

ABHISHEK KUMAR

Partner:

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

University:

University of Saskatchewan

Program:

Globalink