Abstract Failure pressure is one of the most important parameters in pipeline integrity management. It can be defined as the maximal fluid pressure that the pipeline is able to withstand without collapsing. Its value is established during the pipeline project, but it decreases over time due to the action of degradation phenomena like corrosion, which reduces the wall thickness. In order to assure a safe and non-interruptible operation, several guidelines and recommended practices have been developed over the last decades, aiming to establish a standardized method to evaluate the failure pressure based on inspection data. Among them, ASME B31G has been very used, based on the premise that it is more conservative than the others, such as the modified ASME B31G and RPA. On the other hand, DNV-RP-F101 addresses several important issues, like measurement uncertainty, probability and consequence of failure, which are very relevant to integrity management. This article presents a comparison among the most known methods to evaluate the pipeline failure pressures. The ASME B31G, the modified ASME B31G, the RPA and the DNV-RP-F101 are discussed and compared, regarding the influence of inspection uncertainty on failure pressure estimation. As a result, it seems that the ASME B31G is not always the most conservative method. Moreover, the pipeline's useful life may be extended if other methods are used to assess the failure pressure. It is expected that these outcomes motivate a deep discussion about the usage of ASME B31G in spite of other well-established methods.
Demay et al. (Tue,) studied this question.