Piping and Pipeline Assessment Guide
This book is written to be an
assessment guide from the plant engineering, pipeline engineering and
operations perspective. It is intended to serve as a guide for the practicing
plant and pipeline engineer, operations personnel, and central engineering
groups in operating companies. It will serve as a helpful guide for those in
the engineering and construction companies to provide insight to plant and
pipeline operations from their client’s eyes and to writing specifications and
procedures. It also will offer engineering students a perspective about plant
and pipeline operations for a more productive career. Also the book will be a
helpful guide for plant and pipeline inspectors who are so critical to the
satisfactory operation of plant and pipeline facilities. The role and function
of inspectors cannot be over emphasized.
The book is a fitness-for-service
guide with emphasis on remediation of piping and pipelines containing flaws.
The book is divided into eight chapters.
Chapter 1 is about the basic
concepts of fitness-for-service based on the work of the great pioneer Dr. John
F. Kiefner and others who developed the field in the 1960s. The field of
fracture mechanics was in its early stages of development, but the work by
Kiefner, et al., served to translate the theory into practical use in
pipelines.
Chapter 2 is about the ASME
piping and pipeline codes and the basic equations.
Chapter 3 is fitness-for-service
based on the API RP 579 with emphasis on local thin areas, plain dents,
dents-gouges, grooves, and crack-like flaws for piping. The methodology of the
API 579 is reorganized into methodology that simplifies the assessment for the
practitioner. In Chapter 3, there is an extensive discussion about mechanical
damage mechanisms.
Chapter 4 is about the concerns
of brittle fracture and how to assess it. After the basic fitness-for-service
for piping is presented.
