How to Increase the Resilience and Life Expectancy of Ductile Iron and Steel Pipeline Assets

How do we assure a pipeline’s resilience against earthquakes, storms, and flooding? How do we prepare for aggressive soil conditions which may otherwise pose a challenge to a buried asset’s longevity, and how can that longevity be protected, assured, and even extended? How can today’s pipeline infrastructure serve a changing and challenging tomorrow? This paper will briefly outline the latest ductile iron pipe product developments to provide resilience against earthquakes, storms, and flooding. It presents research and field data from both in situ soil and corrosion studies as well as monitored results from an operational pipeline in a soil environment known to be exceptionally corrosive. A photograph from Hurricane Matthew will show resilience against impact. A photograph from Hurricane Harvey will show the importance of joint restraint in areas subject to flood and washout of supporting backfill. The Everglades is known to be among the most aggressive soil environments in North America. This paper’s in situ soil and corrosion study was conducted there and employed an empirical two-dimensional likelihood and consequence of corrosion matrix. The soils scored maximum on the likelihood scale. Pipe samples buried in the Everglades, monitored with corrosion probes, and then exhumed and examined will be presented. Further, an operational pipeline installed in Mid-western/Great Plains soils having a proven record of causing premature corrosion failures will be presented, including monitored corrosion rates and corresponding service-life projections. Life-expectancy projections from the corrosion probe monitoring data from both sites are included and can be of tremendous value to utility owners and operators in a variety of arenas from financial to operational, maintenance, and otherwise. What if utility owners could project with greater confidence the long-term joint resilience and life-expectancy of their ductile iron and steel pipeline systems? This paper will show how they can.