RSI provides workshops and trainings to professionals within the pipeline integrity industry. These workshops span the full range of services we provide and are offered either directly through RSI as on-site at your facility, through an online workshop, or through a third party conference and seminar provider with whom we have partnered. A list of of most common training courses are included here. If you should have need for a customized training that is not shown here, please contact us for assistance.
Our Training Offerings
Microstructure Quantification for Line Pipe Steels
Instructed by: Nathan Switzner, PhD
Line pipe steel is a metallic alloy that typically contains >98% iron (Fe) with small, but important additions of manganese, silicon, carbon, and other elements. As with any alloy, the thermo-mechanical processing history of line pipe steels produces a microscopic structure (microstructure), knowledge of which can provide insight into the composition, vintage, strength, and even toughness of the pipe. While a qualitative understanding of the microstructure can illuminate general performance expectations, quantifying features such as grain size, extant phases, and constituent fractions provides an enhanced opportunity to refine those expectations by comparison to historical pipe characteristics. This is accomplished through the practice of quantitative metallography.
Metallography refers to the practice of cutting out a sample, preparing the sample surface, and viewing the microstructure under a microscope. Images of the microstructure can then be quantified in terms of grain size and constituent fractions. Lately, quantitative metallography has seen increasing use for in situ characterization of line pipe thanks to metallographic “replication”, which is a non-destructive adaptation of metallography whereby the pipe surface is prepared, and a negative imprint of the microstructure is reproduced using a replication medium that can be transferred to the laboratory for quantitative analysis. This presents the practical opportunity to estimate, in situ, the properties of line pipe by quantitative comparison of the field-determined microstructural features with those from a database of historical line pipe.
In this course, you will learn about the steelmaking and line-pipe making processes that give rise to different microstructural features. Next, you will learn about some specific effects and relationships between the quantifiable aspects of steel microstructure and some important properties of steel. We will walk you through the important specifications for quantitative metallography, such as ASTM E112 for grain size evaluation. Finally, you will be trained on how to quantify microstructures using our accurate, streamlined manual methods. By the time you complete this training you will be doing more than just “going through the motions” of quantifying microstructures. You will also begin to understand the context and meaning of your results.
Training provided for small groups through RSI Pipeline Solutions. Please contact us for details.