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Abstract
A novel method of repairing leaking or otherwise damaged metallic pipelines using composites is presented. The method uses a uniquely designed resin-infused composite clamp. This is a significant improvement over commercially available metal clamps, providing lightweight and corrosion-resistant benefits. The design, analyses and testing presented here show that these benefits are in addition to providing uncompromising strength and reliability to the repaired structure. The design includes a combination of calculations and design of experiment optimisation with Finite Element models. The developed design methodology is shown to be robust for designing different clamp sizes. Testing involved short- and long-term survival tests of the clamps as per industrial standards, as well as hot-wet conditioning followed by mechanical testing of the composite material. Finally, a case study field deployment of the clamp on a 4-in propane pipeline with internal corrosion is presented.
Acknowledgements
This work was undertaken within P1.3 Deepwater Composites Project, which is part of a Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS) program, established and supported under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of project staff from Advanced Composite Structures Australia Pty Ltd, PETRONAS Research, Merit Technologies Sdn Bhd, University of Southern Queensland, Supacat Pty Ltd, Pacific ESI and Newcastle University (UK). Special thanks are extended to Y.C. Tan, M. Mahtar (PETRONAS), K. Zakaria and M.A. Awang (Merit Technologies) for assistance with long-term testing and to Professor A.G. Gibson (Newcastle University) for technical inputs during conceptual design stages of the work.
ORCID
K. H. Leong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4045-2381