Hardness testing for sour service – some pitfalls (Online meeting)

This is a London Branch event organised and hosted by the London Branch Committee on behalf of Branch members. Other members are very welcome to register for this talk. Non-Members are also welcome to join us.

Overview: In this talk, John will talk about the application and interpretation issues which arise in hardness testing of welds and steel plate for sour service pipelines and the results of a Joint Industry Project in relation to plate testing.

ISO 15156 species a number of configurations for the hardness survey, including butt welds, fillet welds, weld repairs and weld overlay. The principal configuration of importance to pipelines is that for a butt weld and specifically the weld root which is the region of the metal that faces the sour fluid. However the line of hardness test locations is 1.5 mm from the inside surface for Vickers hardness surveys and 3 mm for Rockwell hardness surveys which introduces a significant test variable. Additionally this test requirement takes no account of the hardness of the weld root bead in contact with the sour fluid.

The surface hardness of steel plate used in the manufacture of linepipe cannot be determined over the whole of the plate surface by conventional methods and John will talk about developments in test methods to provide a representative assessment.

Speaker:  Eur Eng Dr John Boran, BSc, PhD, C Eng, F I MMM, F I Corr, Sen M Weld I, NACE corrosion specialist 68121, M British Institute NDT.

Speaker Biography: 

Dr Boran studied HNC, BSc and PhD in metallurgy and corrosion at the Sir John Cass School of Science and Technology, part of the then City of London Polytechnic, under Professor Lionel Shreir.

He has had a career in industrial metallurgy spanning over 40 years most of which has been spent working in upstream oil and gas projects working for contractors including Petromarine Engineering, Atkins Oil and Gas, Pipeline Technologies, John Brown Engineers and Constructors, Foster Wheeler Petroleum Development, Parsons, Kellogg Brown and Root and Chicago Bridge and Iron.

He has also worked on projects for Oil and Gas companies including; Shell Expro – Subsea valves replacement project following the Pipe Alpha disaster, Marathon Oil UK – East Brae project, Nexen Petroleum – Buzzard project, BG Group – Hasdrubal project, Conoco Phillips – J Block project, ADNC – Hail and Ghasha project and BP – Clair Ridge, Quad 204 and Tortue projects. These projects included materials selection for oil and gas facilities, coatings, risk-based inspection and in particular pipeline fabrication including pipelines for highly sour service and corrosion resistant alloy clad pipelines.

He spent 10 years working on in civil engineering water projects, notably on the Great Man-made River Project (GMRP) in Libya. Recently he also worked for Minton Treharne and Davies where he supported a number of arbitrations.

Download the poster here

Continuing Professional Development (CPD): Attending this event supports your professional development.  You can claim 2 CPD points per hour for this event.  As a member of the Welding Institute you can record your CPD activity online from your membership portal.

Additional Information:

• Registration will close 24 hours before the event starts.
• This is a hybrid event: live and streamed online. Please register for one or the other since we will organise catering based on those known to be attending in person.
• Registration information will be shared with our volunteer Branch members to facilitate the running of this event and for maintaining our records of attendees.