Objective
The aim of the project is to develop and demonstrate completely diverless underwater pipeline repair welding for large diameter oil and gas pipelines.This will be done using the recently developed Friction Stitch Welding process. The process is capable of producing very high quality welds when operating directly in water without a dry habitat. This has not been possible with other welding processes.
The project will demonstrate how this technique can be integrated into recently developed subsea pipeline repair equipment to achieve a relatively simple and reliable diverless pipeline welding system for repair contingency. Welding conditions will be optimised over a range of pipe wall thickness reflecting the pipelines used and planned on subsea gas transmission systems in the North Sea. Test will demonstrate that friction stitch welding is not significantly affected by increased water depth (increased ambient pressure) and can operate directly in sea water on pipe without the need for a dry habitat.
Cost and safety benefits will result from using the system on pipeline tie-ins.
Innovative technology :
Friction Stitch Welding offers the following advantages for repairing deep water pipelines. The process is not sensitive to increased pressure (water depth) as is the case with electric arc welding. It is simple to automate for remote diverless operation. It can produce high quality welds when operated directly on water without the need for a dry habitat or dewatering the section of pipeline to be repaired.
Context:
By the year 2000 approximately 30% of the gas used in Germany, France and Belgium will come through a network of large diameter underwater gas pipelines from the Norwegian North Sea. The systems presently available for repairing these pipelines depend on the use of divers with dry hyperbaric welding in a habitat. It has been decided that manned diving should be phased out in the Norwegian sector by the year 2002. The Friction Stitch Welding process was invented by TWI (Cambridge). Recent underwater development of the system has been carried out as part of an EC sponsored BRITE Euram project on underwater repairs for offshore platforms, ships and the nuclear industry. This THERMIE project will now adapt the welding process for deep water pipeline repair and demonstrate the feasibility of using it on deep water gas transmission pipelines.
With the Friction Stitch Welding process a hole, typically 12mm in diameter, is drilled into the steel to be welded. A steel bar is inserted into the hole and rotated while an axial force is applied. Plastic flow occurs at the metal interface due to heat and pressure.The interface between the plastic flowing material and the rotating bar moves rapidly up the hole filling it with friction weld metal.Two pieces of steel can be joined using this process by butting the edges together and then drilling and filling a series of overlapping holes along the joint. The process is rapid and suitable for use on materials thicker than about 10mm.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Coordinator
AB21 9RQ Aberdeen
United Kingdom
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