Steel pipes are daily transported all over the world by truck, train or ship. Consequently, shipping damages may occur frequent and regularly. The particular damage selected for this study was fatigue cracking, that is considered as the more critical one. In this job were studied steel pipes manufactured according to the requirements of the specification API 5L [1]. Chemical, mechanical and micrographic characterizations were made in a pipe size Ø 609.6 mm x 15.87 mm grade X-65. For the simulation of a ship transportation of steel pipes, pipe lengths sections of 0.1 meter were submitted to fatigue cycles from a servo-hydraulic machine. It was possible to conclude that in welded pipes, the weld region adjacent to the weld toe is the more critical and when the pipe positioning at the vessel result in to be the weld in contact with rigid surface, the occurrence of fatigue cracking is possible mainly if the handling, loading and transportation procedures were not executed as recommended by the pipe manufacturers and by the API specification.
Welded pipe; transportation; fatigue cracking
