Residual stress in pipeline girth welds- A review of recent data and modelling

Girth weld residual stresses cannot be avoided during welding and could affect the integrity of the pipeline during installation and service. Procedure BS 7910 is widely accepted for structural integrity assessment of pipelines and provides guidelines regarding appropriate residual stress assumptions for girth welds. However, there are limitations based on the assumptions provided in BS 7910. This paper revisits recent studies of girth weld residual stress in the context of pipeline integrity to provide suggestions for future improvements of the codes and standards. The review carried out in this paper is mainly limited to published measurement data and advances in the numerical simulation of girth weld residual stress in ferritic steels during the last ten years.