Objective
Objectives and content
The strategic importance of oil and gas transportation
and distribution for the energy supply in Europe and
elsewhere has been emphasised by the investments made in
this area in recent years. The projected world market
for pipeline in 1998 is 7200000 tonnes, rising to 7600000
tonnes in the year 2000. In Europe alone 30000 km
pipeline will be installed by the end of 1997.
Currently, large diameter pipes, as used in the oil & gas
transmission and distribution industries are welded by
submerged arc welding (SAW) process (inside and outside
seams) at an effective welding speed of approximately
1m/min. This is a high heat input process, using up to
five consumable wires resulting in a substantial volume
of deposited weld metal and requires the inspection of
the inside and outside seams. Furthermore, the weld
metal introduces a chemical, microstructural and strength
heterogeneity in the joint which affects the weldment's
mechanical behaviour and corrosion resistance.
The many advantages of the laser beam welding (LBW)
technology have been now recognised in various fields of
manufacturing. The success of the laser welding is
attributed to the high power density available for the
joining process. As a result of that autogenous welds
can be produced in key-hole mode at welding speeds in the
order of 20m/min with enhanced weldment quality (e.g.
defect tolerance, strength, corrosion resistance, etc.).
The use of the advantages of the LBW to pipeline
production has been already recognised in the USA and
Japan which are already exploiting high power laser beam
welding technology in pilot plants for pipeline
production and attempting to introduce it in
international standards, guidelines and codes. The
introduction of this environmental friendly technology
will have the following benefits: increased productivity
and quality as well as reduced material and capital
costs. This project is aimed at the implementation of
the LBW technology in the production of steel pipelines
and the analysis of their structural integrity, in order
to provide a more effective, technically superior
replacement of the current SAW based technology, the
research tasks include the development or optimisation of
existing pipeline steels and associated welding and
repair procedures, the development of suitable production
technology (laser welding process & equipment, preheating and NDE) and to conduct a thorough
characterisation of the welded joints of various pipeline
steels to demonstrate the suitability of the product to
the envisaged application.
This project will, in effect, combine and adapt a series
of innovative and cost effective production technologies
with improved pipe materials to face the technological
challenges of non-European pipeline producers and
therefore increase the competitiveness of the European
industry through increased productivity and product
quality.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticslaser physics
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
S60 3AR ROTHERHAM
United Kingdom