Three girth weld cracking events were found by X-ray inspection in one natural gas station.
To determine the failure cause, one of the three failure events was studied by visual
inspection, nondestructive testing, microstructure examination, scanning electronic
microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), blasting tests, finite
element simulations and a series physical and chemical tests. The results revealed that the
welding defects were original failure factor, and these welding defects led to crack initiation …