Residual stress plays an important role in many of the issues found in pipelines, such as stress corrosion cracking (SCC), hydrogen induced cracking (HIC), fatigue cracking, welding stresses, heat treatment effectiveness, surface enhancements due to cold work, ending due to seismic activity, and installation stresses. The significant effect that residual stress has on the performance and life of a component makes it extremely important to characterize these stresses.
The full benefit of a design can only be achieved when favorable residual stresses have been introduced into a component and harmful residual stresses have been minimized. X-ray diffraction is a portable, non-destructive, quantitative, highly accurate, and robust method to quantify residual stress. Modern equipment makes it quick and easy to do measurements in the laboratory, in line, and in the field. Proto’s portable measurement systems enable measurements to be easily performed on pipelines in the field.
