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Content archived on 2024-06-16

Quality assurance and structural evaluation of GRP pipes

Objective

Over 10 million kilometres of pipelines in European transport hazardous fluids, of which over half are carrying hydrocarbons (i.e. oil, oil derivatives and gas). Only a very small number of these pipelines are made from corrosion resistant GRP materials, with the vast majority of pipelines being fabricated from steel pipes joined together by butt welds.

Steel pipelines are prone to corrode over a period of time and are therefore likely to leak hydrocarbon products into the environment. For use in ambient temperatures and relatively low pressure applications, GRP would offer an attractive alternative to steel were it not the fact that the integrity of the interconnecting pipe joints cannot be inspected with a high level of confidence.

The inadequacy of conventional NOT techniques seriously limits the current applications of GRP pipelines and furthermore the joint needs to be 'over wrapped' to provide a secondary containment in event that the primary joint is defective. If suitable NOT methods can be developed, GRP pipe would be used in additional applications pipeline that cannot be currently considered as viable. The consortium SME partners propose to develop new and novel Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques, sensors and systems that are capable of assessing the quality assurance and structural integrity of 'production' and 'in-service' GRP pipes and pipe joints.

Hence this key enabling technology will facilitate the use of GRP materials without the need for cost prohibitive over engineering processes such as secondary containment 'over-wrap'. The highly reliable and sensitive NOT methods developed under this proposal will also extend the use of GRP pipe into other applications that have traditionally been the domain of corrosion prone metallics that have resulted in a series of catastrophes.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2002-SME-1
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Funding Scheme

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Coordinator

TWI LIMITED
EU contribution
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Total cost

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Participants (13)

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