• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.66-74
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• 2005

API(American Petroleum Institute) steel, as a line pipe material, requires the enhanced mechanical and chemical properties with the environmental severity. Especially, the weld part(weld metal and heat affected zone) is an important region for the safety. However, the study for the behavior of microstructure and toughness in multi-pass welding is seldom. In this study, the relationship between the microstructure and toughness of welds with several welding, bending and heat-treatment conditions was examined. In particular, HIC property in the weld metal was evaluated. The microstructure and toughness in multi-passed HAZ seemed to be determined by the final welding thermal cycle and the low toughness was attributed to the MA constituents formed in the intercritically reheated region. The weld metal showed very low toughness and it was not improved by the change in bending and heat treatment conditions. Additionally, the cracks are observed in the weld metal. from these results, it was found that the choice of welding wire/flux is very important.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.185-192
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• 2022

Variations in the microstructure and mechanical properties of API X70 steel processed by piping, electrical resistance welding (ERW), and post seam annealing (PSA) are investigated in this study. In the welding zone, some elongated pearlites are formed and grains coarsening occurs due to extra heat caused by the ERW and PSA processes. After the piping, the base metal shows continuous yielding behavior and a decrease in yield and impact strengths because mobile dislocation and back stress are introduced during the piping process. On the other hand, the ERW and PSA processes additionally decreased the impact strength of welding zone at room and low temperatures because some elongated pearlites easily act as crack initiation site and coarse ferrite grains facilitate crack propagation. As a result, the fracture surface of the welding zone specimen tested at low temperature revealed mostly cleavage fracture unlike the base metal specimen.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.351-361
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• 2024

Accurate measurement of K_IC values for gas pipeline steels is important for assessing pipe safety using failure assessment diagrams. As direct measurement of K_IC was impossible for the API X70 pipeline steel, multi-specimen fracture tests were conducted to measure J_IC using three-point bend geometry. The J values were calculated from load-displacement (F-δ) plots, and the associated crack extensions were measured from the fracture surface of test specimens. Valid data points were found for the constructed J-Δa plot resulting in J_IC=356kN/m. More data points were added analytically to the J-Δa plot to increase the number of data points without performing additional experiments for different J-Δa zones where test data was unavailable. Consequently, displacement (δ) and crack-growth (Δa) from multi-specimen tests (with small displacements) were used simultaneously, resulting in the variation of Δa-δ (crack growth law) and δ-Δa obtained for this steel. For new Δa values, corresponding δ values were first calculated from δ-Δa. Then, corresponding J values for the obtained δ values were calculated from the area under the F-δ record of a full-fractured specimen (with large displacement). Given Δa and J values for new data points, the developed J-Δa plot with extra data points yielded a satisfactory estimation of J_IC=345kN/m with only a -3.1% error. This is promising and showed that the developed technique could ease the estimation of J_IC significantly and reduce the time and cost of expensive extra fracture toughness tests.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.59-70
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• 2009

This study is concerned with the correlation between microstructure and mechanical properties in heat affected zones (HAZs) of API X80 pipeline steels containing complex oxides. Three kinds of specimens were fabricated by varying alloying elements of Ti, Al, and Mg to form complex oxides, and their microstructures, Vickers hardness, Charpy impact properties were investigated. The number of complex oxides increased as the excess amount of Ti, Al, and Mg was included in the steels. The simulated HAZs containing a number of oxides showed a high volume fraction of acicular ferrite region because oxides acted as nucleation sites for acicular ferrite. According to the correlation study between thermal input, volume fraction of acicular ferrite region, and Charpy impact properties, the ductile fracture occurred predominantly when the volume fraction of acicular ferrite region was 65% or higher, and the Charpy absorbed energy was excellent over 200 J. When the volume fraction of acicular ferrite region was 35% or lower, the Charpy absorbed energy was poor below 50 J as the brittle cleavage fracture occurred. These findings suggested that the active nucleation of acicular ferrite in the oxide-containing steel HAZs was associated with the great improvement of Charpy impact properties of the HAZs.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.67-73
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• 2011

One of the important topics to prepare the up-coming era of so-called ‘hydrogen economy’ is hydrogen transmission. Pipeline is conceivably the most economic way to consistently and safely transport a large amount of hydrogen over a long distance, which may be strongly requested in hydrogen economy era. As a good starting point for the purpose, one might wonder whether conventional API pipeline steels as designed for natural gas transmission can be used as the hydrogen pipeline materials or not. To answer the question, here we performed a series of micro-/nano-indentations together with tensile tests on the hydrogen-charged API X65, X70 and X100 steels having different strength level. In this paper, from the results of tensile tests, the hydrogen effects on the mechanical behavior in the API steels are systematically evaluated.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.109-115
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• 2018

Electrical Resistance Welding (ERW) on a longitudinal seam-welded pipe has been extensively used in oil and gas pipelines. It is well known that the weld zone commonly suffers from grooving corrosion in ERW pipes. In this paper, the grooving corrosion performances of API X65 grade non-sour service (steel-A) and API X70 grade sour gas resistant (steel-B) steel electrical resistance welding pipelines were evaluated. The microstructure of the bondline is composed of coarse polygonal ferrite grains and several elongated pearlites. The elongated pattern is mainly concentrated in the center of the welded area. The grooving corrosion test and electrochemical polarization test were conducted to study the corrosion behavior of the given materials. A V-shaped corrosion groove was found at the center of the fusion zone in both the steel-A and steel-B ERW pipes, as the corrosion rate of the bondlines is higher than that of the base metal. Furthermore, the higher volume fraction of pearlite at the bondline was responsible for the higher corrosion rate at the bondline of both types of steel.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.5
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• pp.565-574
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• 2022

The infrastructures such as offshore, bridges, power plant, oil and gas piping and aircraft operate in a harsh environment during their service life. Structural integrity of engineering components used in these industries is paramount for the reliability and economics of operation. Two regression models based on the concept of Gaussian process regression (GPR) and Minimax probability machine regression (MPMR) were developed to predict stress intensity factor range (𝚫K). Both GPR and MPMR are in the frame work of probability distribution. Models were developed by using the fatigue crack growth data in MATLAB by appropriately modifying the tools. Fatigue crack growth experiments were carried out on Eccentrically-loaded Single Edge notch Tension (ESE(T)) specimens made of API 5L X65 Grade steel in inert and corrosive environments (2.0% and 3.5% NaCl). The experiments were carried out under constant amplitude cyclic loading with a stress ratio of 0.1 and 5.0 Hz frequency (inert environment), 0.5 Hz frequency (corrosive environment). Crack growth rate (da/dN) and stress intensity factor range (𝚫K) values were evaluated at incremental values of loading cycle and crack length. About 70 to 75% of the data has been used for training and the remaining for validation of the models. It is observed that the predicted SIF range is in good agreement with the corresponding experimental observations. Further, the performance of the models was assessed with several statistical parameters, namely, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Coefficient of Efficiency (E), Root Mean Square Error to Observation's Standard Deviation Ratio (RSR), Normalized Mean Bias Error (NMBE), Performance Index (ρ) and Variance Account Factor (VAF).

• 한국가스학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.31-34
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• 2001

점차 가시화되고 있는 이루크츠크 가시도입 사업과 같은 장거리 가스배관에 사용될 배관은 현재 국내 가스배관과는 다른 종류가 될 가능성이 매우 높다. 이에 API X70 이상의 고강도 강재 개발부터 배관건설현장 용접 결함평가기준까지 다양한 분야의 기술개발이 필요하다. 이러한 기술개발은 어느 한 기관이 아닌 여러 관련업계가 함께 연구 및 제품개발에 참여하는 대형 과제로서 추진하는 것이 효과적이다.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.373-383
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• 2021

The effect of Cr addition to high Mn steel on flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) behavior in a neutral aqueous environment was evaluated. For comparison, two types of conventional ferritic steels (API X70 steel and 9% Ni steel) were used. A range of experiments (electrochemical polarization and impedance tests, weight loss measurement, and metallographic observation of corrosion scale) were conducted. This study showed that high Mn steel with 3% Cr exhibited the highest resistance to FAC presumably due to the formation of a bi-layer scale structure composed of an inner Cr enriched Fe oxide and an outer Mn substituted partially with Fe oxide on the surface. Although the high Mn steels had the lowest corrosion resistance at the initial corrosion stage due to rapid dissolution kinetics of Mn elements on their surface, the kinetics of inner scale (i.e. Cr enriched Fe oxide) formation on Cr-bearing high Mn steel was faster in dynamic flowing condition compared to stagnant condition. On the other hand, the corrosion scales formed on API X70 and 9% Ni steels did not provide sufficient anti-corrosion function during the prolonged exposure to dynamic flowing conditions.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.96-102
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• 2007

The resistance of the linepipe steel to hydrogen-induced cracking (HIC) and sulfide stress cracking (SSC) is very important for steel to be used in sour oil/gas environments. Welding of steels is necessary to the construction of pipe-line transporting oil/gas. In this study, HIC and SSC resistance of an electric resistance welded (ERW) steel plate which belongs to API X70 grade was evaluated by using NACE TM0284-96A and NACE TM0177-96A methods. HIC and SSC fracturing behavior was investigated by observing fractured surfaces using optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was discussed in terms of metallurgical parameters such as the distribution of primary microstructure, second phases and inclusions. Results showed that the weld joint of ERW steel is more sensitive than base metal to HIC and SSC. This is due to difference in the contribution of metallurgical parameters to HIC and SSC nucleation and propagation.