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A structured reference for evaluating pipeline defects and integrity conditions.
This tool provides structured guidance for evaluating pipeline defects and integrity conditions. It is designed to support engineering thinking, data collection, and early-stage assessment.
It does not replace professional engineering judgment, operator procedures, or regulatory requirements.
Beta notice: This tool is an active development (beta) version. Content, structure, and guidance may change over time and may contain errors or incomplete information. Users should not rely on this tool as a final or authoritative source and should apply professional engineering judgment and applicable procedures.
Common starting points during integrity review
37 topics
Metal Loss
Axial corrosion describes metal loss elongated in the pipe axis direction. It is often reviewed as a remaining-strength concern, but practical screening still depends on how the feature relates to nearby anomalies, welds, bends, and prior growth history.
Metal Loss
Circumferential corrosion is metal loss with notable circumferential orientation or span. It often warrants a more careful review than routine axial corrosion because feature orientation, local bending, and sizing confidence can change the practical concern.
Interaction Issues
Corrosion colony or cluster guidance is for areas where many nearby corrosion indications form a broader damaged zone and the engineering question is no longer about one box but about the local corrosion system.
Crack-Like Features
Crack-like feature is a screening label for indications that may represent cracking, crack colonies, seam-related cracking, or another linear threat requiring specialized review and careful data qualification.
Data Quality / ILI Review
Data quality and ILI review is the workflow used to decide whether the inspection data are trustworthy enough to support a real engineering decision. In practice this means checking whether the reported feature, location, sizing, and classification are still inside the tool's qualified capability and whether the tool call is unified with field reality, prior runs, weld alignment, and any excavation history.
Dents
Dent guidance starts with geometric deformation but quickly moves into context: where the dent sits, whether it interacts with other threats, and whether shape alone understates the concern.
Dents
Dent at weld review focuses on dents located on or near girth or seam welds, where local stiffness changes and weld-related stress effects can drive a different response than a plain dent.
Interaction Issues
Dent with crack-like indicators is the review path for deformations that also show crack-like behavior, crack suspicion, or a local context where cracking cannot be comfortably excluded.
Interaction Issues
Dent with gouge or mechanical damage is the workflow for deformed pipe where the concern includes wall disruption, coating damage, or surface tearing from impact rather than plain geometry alone.
Interaction Issues
Dent with metal loss is an interacting condition where a geometric deformation and a wall-loss feature are located in the same local area or close enough that they may influence each other. It is more complex than either condition alone because the dent changes the local stress state while the metal loss reduces wall section and can distort how the defect is classified, sized, and prioritized. Typical sources include outside-force damage with coating disruption, corrosion that develops within or near a dented area, corrosion under an older deformation, and cases where a dent may also include gouging or other mechanical damage.
Interaction Issues
External mechanical damage from bullet strikes, equipment impacts, dropped objects, vehicle strikes, or other third-party contact can introduce dents, gouges, coating damage, localized wall loss, and stress concentration in the same local area. These conditions are not always obvious from ILI alone, so field confirmation often becomes important when the mechanism, severity, or interaction is uncertain.
Geotechnical / Strain
Frost heave and thaw settlement guidance focuses on seasonal or progressive ground movement that changes support conditions, induces bending, or creates recurring strain concern at a location.
Metal Loss
General metal loss is the starting point for corrosion review when wall loss is reported but the practical question is still whether the feature is isolated, interacting, growing, or part of a broader integrity mechanism.
Geotechnical / Strain
Geotechnical movement covers land-driven loading such as slope movement, frost heave, settlement, washout, and unstable support conditions that may change strain demand or create secondary defect concerns.
Girth Weld / Fabrication Issues
Girth weld concern helps organize review when an anomaly is on or near a girth weld and the engineer needs to understand whether weld interaction changes significance, data confidence, or next actions.
Girth Weld / Fabrication Issues
Girth weld corrosion, or weld-associated metal loss, is the workflow for corrosion that sits at or very near a girth weld, field-joint coating area, heat-affected zone, weld shoulder, or wall-thickness transition where the weld context may change the meaning of the metal loss.
Girth Weld / Fabrication Issues
Girth weld cracking is the workflow for crack-like or confirmed cracking associated with a girth weld, heat-affected zone, or weld-adjacent fabrication detail where weld-related failure mechanisms may control the response.
Interaction Issues
A gouge is localized mechanical damage where metal has been displaced, torn, or removed from the pipe surface. It may occur with a dent, but it can also exist without obvious gross deformation and still be important because the local notch effect, wall disturbance, and potential crack initiation can govern the integrity concern.
Manufacturing / Material Anomalies
Hard spot review is the workflow for localized high-hardness regions created during plate or pipe manufacture that may remain dormant for years and then become integrity-relevant when coating damage, environment, or hydrogen exposure turns them into cracking sites.
Manufacturing / Material Anomalies
Hook crack review is the workflow for crack-like defects associated with ERW seam manufacturing where the anomaly may reflect a manufacturing-related crack path rather than ordinary corrosion or a generic seam indication.
Interaction Issues
Interacting metal loss is the review path used when multiple nearby corrosion features could combine into a more severe effective condition than any single listed anomaly suggests.
Metal Loss
Internal corrosion review is the workflow for metal loss that may be driven by the product stream, water hold-up, solids, deposits, flow disturbances, dead legs, drips, or other service-related internal conditions rather than outside environment alone.
Girth Weld / Fabrication Issues
Lack of fusion or incomplete penetration review covers fabrication-related weld anomalies where the concern is not ordinary metal loss or cracking alone, but a weld-quality discontinuity that may affect integrity depending on size, location, loading, and service history.
Manufacturing / Material Anomalies
Laminations and inclusions are manufacturing-related material anomalies caused by impurities or incomplete bonding within the steel. They may remain benign for long periods, or they may become integrity-relevant when oriented unfavorably, when they link to a surface, or when cycling and local stress allow them to grow.
Geotechnical / Strain
Landslide or slope movement guidance covers areas where hillslope instability, creep, washout, or erosion may be changing pipe support, introducing bending, or driving segment-level strain concerns.
Geotechnical / Strain
Ovality or out-of-roundness review is the workflow for pipe cross-section distortion that may reflect construction, bending, settlement, external loading, or local geometry change rather than a discrete dent alone.
Geotechnical / Strain
Pipe buckling or local buckle review is used when the pipe shows compressive deformation, instability, or a geometry response that may reflect bending, axial compression, loss of support, or sustained outside-force loading rather than a simple dent or wrinkle alone.
Metal Loss
Pitting is localized metal loss with concentrated depth over a relatively small footprint. In practice, engineers often need to determine whether the call is a single pit, a colony, or part of a more irregular corrosion area.
Geotechnical / Strain
River crossing movement addresses loading, exposure, scour, and support-change concerns at crossings where the pipe may be affected by channel migration, bank instability, or changing support conditions.
Crack-Like Features
SCC review focuses on whether stress corrosion cracking is a credible mechanism at the location and what additional context is needed before determining the right response.
Girth Weld / Fabrication Issues
Seam weld concern is the review path for anomalies that are on or near the longitudinal seam or may reflect seam-related manufacturing susceptibility, cracking, corrosion, or stress interaction. This includes cases where metal loss appears close to the seam and the engineer has to decide whether it is only incidental proximity or whether the seam is actually part of the mechanism.
Manufacturing / Material Anomalies
Selective seam weld corrosion, often shortened to SSWC, is the workflow for corrosion that preferentially follows the longitudinal seam or weld line rather than appearing as ordinary body-pipe metal loss. The practical question is whether the metal loss is truly seam-following and seam-driven, or whether the seam is only nearby and the interaction is incidental.
Geotechnical / Strain
Strain concern is used when IMU, deformation, construction history, or related evidence suggests the pipe may be experiencing notable bending or strain that changes the meaning of nearby defects.
Equipment / Appurtenance Issues
Threaded fitting deterioration is the workflow for degraded threaded connections, small-bore fittings, nipples, couplings, or other threaded hardware where leakage, loosening, corrosion, vibration, or fatigue may be controlling the concern rather than the pipe body alone.
Data Quality / ILI Review
Unknown or unclassified feature guidance is for anomalies that cannot yet be confidently routed into a defect mechanism or engineering workflow because the data are incomplete, conflicting, or ambiguous.
Equipment / Appurtenance Issues
Valve or appurtenance leak concern covers leaking valves, vents, drains, bypasses, instrument connections, and other appurtenances where the integrity issue may be hardware degradation, loosening, packing failure, fitting deterioration, or local wall disturbance around the connection.
Geotechnical / Strain
Wrinkle bends are local geometric irregularities associated with bending or construction history. In integrity review they often matter less as a label and more as a clue to loading, strain concentration, or potential crack susceptibility.