Reliability assessments of corroded pipelines based on internal pressure - A review

Corrosion is one of the most significant threats for onshore pipelines that may lead to a Loss of Containment (LOC). A LOC poses significant consequences over the surrounding people and environment because of the hazardousness of the transporting fluids, so different efforts have been raised to predict pipe failures, which are commonly based on reliability assessments with limit state functions. These functions are gathered in serviceability, leakage, and ultimate conditions, out of which the last two approaches contemplate a LOC. This paper reviews recognized limit state functions for corroded pipelines, and it discusses their assumptions and applicability. Specifically, this paper focuses on burst limit pressures considering the relevance in the academic literature and Oil & Gas standards. Therefore, a thorough comparison is presented based on failure criteria, acceptable defect dimensions, failure probability, and error prediction based on experimental and numerical burst tests. The objective is to evaluate the level of conservatism of each simplified model depending on the material toughness and the corrosion rate. This review aims to support a reliability model selection in corroded pipelines for future intervention strategies.