EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION AND ANALYSIS OF SMAW PROCESSED CARBON STEEL PIPES

Pipelines all over the world carry a huge quantity of oil, gas and petroleum products. If there is any leakage or burst occurs in these pipelines, it will affect our environment drastically resulting in loss of life, time and economy. The various causes for the pipelines to fail, mainly internal weld discontinuities such as lack of penetration, lack of fusion, slag inclusions, cracks etc. have been identified. Over the years, several studies were conducted in pipeline welding field to get less defective or defect-free weld joints by resorting to various welding techniques such as Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW), Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW/MIG) etc. Selection of the type of weld mainly depends on the application in which it will be used and the working pressure of the fluid. The study focuses on the quality of weld in the centralized Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) piping system found in the residential and commercial buildings in U. A. E. Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) technique is selected for the work and an attempt has been made to get the best quality weld by using different combinations of weld electrodes. In this present work, the experimental investigation and analysis of SMAW processed carbon steel pipes were discussed. Two different combinations of electrode materials were used for this investigation. The main objective of this work is to suggest the best combination of weld electrode material for the centralized Liquefied Petroleum Gas piping system.