Environmental effect on pipeline steels: A fitness for service perspective

The Structural integrity assessment of components has advanced greatly in recent years. New tools, such as the Failure
Assessment Diagram used in the FITNET procedure, have provided a friendly, efficient methodology for assessing all kinds of
components. This work applies the new approaches to assessing the structural integrity of pipelines subjected to high
pressure hydrogen.
This analysis involves several specific factors. The first one is the material embrittlement due to the hydrogen whose main
consequence is a decrease in fracture toughness. The last critical factor is the influence of crack geometry on the failure
process because different geometries can lead to different failure mechanisms. This paper analyses fractures under different
conditions.