30 Jun 2022

At this year’s ASME Pressure Vessel & Piping Conference 2022 in Las Vegas, July 17 - 22, 2022, Intertek’s expert Marvin Cohn, P.E., Director of Piping Asset Integrity Management and an ASME PVP 2022, MF-5 Session Chairman on Fitness for Service, will be presenting a technical paper publication:

  • Title: Technical Justification to Extend Girth Weld Examination Intervals
  • Date: Tuesday, July 19,2022
  • Time: 10:15am
  • Room: Marquis 6
  • Assigned session MR-05-02 Fitness for Service and Failure Assessment 

This technical paper publication is based on The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Power Piping Code B31.1 that discusses operation and maintenance piping system program requirements (Chapter VII). The program requirements for covered piping systems (CPS) operating in the creep range include the process of piping system walkdowns and the evaluation of significant field anomalies. Piping system walkdowns frequently reveal piping support issues such as bottomed-out, topped-out, or broken spring hangers (Cohn, M.J., Gialdini, R.J., and Nye, O.B., 2021).

Assessment of the piping system integrity for malfunctioning supports includes determining the highest ranked locations of consumed creep life and implementing applicable nondestructive examinations (NDE) at the selected locations. Consideration of the actual pipe wall thicknesses and evaluation of the piping system historical operating temperatures and pressures can improve the remaining creep life estimates. After evaluations of the site-specific NDE results, the Intertek strategy is to select locations with estimated remaining creep rupture lives less than 20 years for NDE during the next scheduled outage.

The process of 1) comprehensive piping system walkdowns, 2) simulation as-found stress analyses to observed field displacements, 3) NDE at the minimum remaining creep life locations, and 4) determining the next set of minimum creep life locations has been used to evaluate current piping system integrity and provide additional confidence in safely operating the piping system until the next scheduled outage. 

Marvin Cohn has over 35 years of experience in the fields of engineering mechanics, stress analysis and metallurgy. Marvin is an author of more than 50 technical papers, including eight professional journal papers, and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) as well as a member of the ASME B31.1 Power Piping Section Committee. 

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