Mon, 17 February, 2020
TWI’s Stephen Cater will attend OPT 2020, Europe’s leading offshore pipeline technology conference, in Amsterdam over 25–27 February, to present details of an innovative variation on friction stir welding that allows welds to be made under oil.
Working as part of a consortium led by Forth Engineering and funded by UK Innovate, TWI has developed the ability to perform friction stir welds in steel under oil and shown that these welds are suitable for making patch repairs in API X65 steel. This development has enabled the consortium to design a robotic welding system that can be deployed inside a 36” diameter pipe subsea pipeline to perform repair procedures without needing to stop the flow of oil, thereby significantly reducing the costs of maintaining pipelines. The same technology could also be applied to welding in other difficult environments, for example inside fuel storage tanks and other types of pipeline.
Discover more about internal weld repair of live oil pipelines here.
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