Ch01-H7880.

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22 Escoe: Piping and Pipeline Assessment Guide

The conservatism of the original B31G criterion leads to excessive

amounts of piping either being unnecessarily repaired or replaced. The
sources for the conservatism follow:

1. The expression for the flow stress.

2. The approximation used for the Folias factor.
3. The parabolic representation of the metal loss (as used within the
B31G limits), primarily the limitation when applied to long areas of
corrosion.
4. The inability to consider the strengthening effect of islands of full
pipe wall thickness or near-full thickness at the ends of or between
arrays of corrosion pits.

It was known even when the original B31G criterion was developed
that 110% of the SMYS substantially underestimates the flow stress of
the piping material. For the Kiefner modified criterion, the value of the
flow stress is taken as SMYS  10,000 psi. As will be shown later, this
value can be adjusted with a factor of safety.
The two-term approximation for the Folias factor used in the original
B31G criterion has been replaced by more exact and less conservative
approximations. These approximations follow:

L2
For values of 50,
Dt

√  DtL   0.003375 DtL 

2 2 2
MT  1  0.6275 Eq. 1-5

L2
For values of
50,
Dt

MT  0.032    3.3
L2
Dt
Eq. 1-6

The parabolic representation of the area (A), where A  2⁄3Ld, was devel-
oped after Kiefner performed 47 burst tests. In reality, the parabolic rep-
resentation of the area (A) has significant limitations. If the corroded
region is very long, the effect of the metal loss is underestimated, and the
remaining strength is overestimated. To prevent the misuse of the crite-
rion for long, deep corroded regions, the method was limited to defects
for which L2/Dt 20.