Interaction rule guidance for corrosion features reported by in-line inspection (ILI)

Therefore, understanding how various anomalies may interact is important to determining the overall remaining strength of a pipeline under pressure. Many criteria for this spacing and how to apply the rules are recommended in the literature and have been studied either as the focus or periphery by several more, but no single criterion is provided as regulation. The task is left to the pipeline operator to choose the interaction rule for what is defined as ‘closely spaced corrosion.’ The method by which the failure pressure is calculated should be considered as varying levels of conservatism are inherent in these assessments.

Recommendations for interaction guidelines have been determined by either empirical or analytical approaches. The empirical approaches may be limited when an insufficient number and variety of pipes can be burst tested. Many analytical approaches are based upon relationships of remaining wall and simple corrosion morphologies which may not be applicable to real world corrosion. The source of the corrosion anomaly data is an important variable when selecting and applying interaction rules. In-line inspections (ILI) are the most common methods by which to obtain corrosion anomaly data, but each technology has an inherent measurement error and bias which should be considered. This paper will go into detail on each of the items discussed, present the current state of research into this subject in the industry, and will present a general recommendation for selection of an interaction criterion for corrosion features reported by ILI.

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