Fri, 12 September, 2025
We are pleased to announce that a paper, co-written by experts from TWI and Petrobras, has won the Calgary Award at the Rio Pipeline Conference in Brazil.
The paper, ‘Stress Corrosion Cracking of Flexible Steel Pipe Wires in CO2 Environments’ was one of 500 papers submitted to the conference, which was originally established by the Instituto Brasileiro de Petroleo e Gas (IBP) in 2001.
Co-written by Jackson Wo, Michael Dodge, John Rothwell and Kasra Sotoudeh from TWI alongside Fabricio Pinheiro Dos Santos from Petrobras, the study outlined in the award-winning paper investigated CO2-induced stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in flexible steel armour wires used in flexible pipes for the oil and gas industry.
TWI's Michael Dodge (left) with Fabricio Pinheiro Dos Santos from Petrobras (right) with the award at the Rio Pipeline Conference in Brazil
For the study, flexible steel armour wires were tested in 4-point bend configurations in a 3.5 wt.% NaCl and CO2 environment at various temperatures (40°C, 30 to 60°C cycling, 60°C), 15 barg, and loaded to near yield stress.
However, despite the relatively aggressive conditions, only three instances of cracking were observed and was limited to submerged regions and test temperatures above 40°C. These findings differed significantly from other studies that used nominally similar materials and testing conditions, suggesting that factors other than stress, CO2 concentration, and temperature may influence SCC-CO2 cracking. Microstructural features, such as coarse grains at the crack tips, suggested that metallurgical factors could play a critical role in defining the susceptibility of steel wires to SCC-CO2 cracking.
As the winner of the Calgary Award, the paper will now go forward to be presented at the International Pipeline Conference in Calgary, Canada, next year.
This award shows the technical excellence available for our Industrial Members at TWI.