Failure analysis of corrosion at an inhomogeneous welded joint in a natural gas gathering pipeline considering the combined action of multiple factors

Abstract A gathering pipeline in a gas field in Northeast China transporting mainly natural gas and also some water and sands was welded using two 20G pipes with different wall thicknesses. The internal corrosion of this pipeline was inhomogeneous. The unequal wall thickness welded joint suffered more serious corrosion damage than did other parts of the pipe and was found to fail during routine maintenance. In this paper, the corrosion damage at this joint was studied based on inhomogeneity. Internal and external factors affecting corrosion, such as the mechanical and electrochemical properties of materials, stress distribution at the joint, and the flow condition in the pipe, and their combined action were investigated. Failure attribution was performed on this basis. Specifically, a hardness test was conducted on different zones of the joint, including the base metal (BM), heat-affected zone (HAZ) and weld metal (WM), to investigate the abrasive wear resistance at the joint. Microstructures of the three zones were characterized by optical microscopy. The morphology and composition of the corrosion film covering the inner surface of the welded joint were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). Potentiodynamic polarization experiments and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were conducted on samples from the three zones to investigate their electrochemical performances. Moreover, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed to obtain the flow condition near the joint, and a finite element method (FEM) was used to calculate the stress distribution at the joint. The results showed that the internal corrosion mechanism of the pipeline was CO 2 corrosion accelerated by detrimental Cl − . The geometric discontinuity of the welded joint was the main cause of the accelerated corrosion damage at the joint. The change in wall thickness of the welded pipe not only produced gas vortices but also led to stress concentration. Both of these conditions can further accelerate corrosion by destroying the protectiveness of the corrosion film. It is suggested that the corrosion can be prevented by eliminating the inhomogeneities of fluid flow and stress distribution.