Mike Kirkwood

Before introducing my pipeline heroe, I must first acknowledge my wider engineering inspiration: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Celebrated for his groundbreaking work on dockyards and his pioneering steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic vessels, Brunel transformed Britain’s infrastructure. His bridges and tunnels still serve the...

In Professor Hopkins’ previous ptj Insights, the focus was on pipeline defects. In this ptj Insights, we will focus on anomalies. The word “anomaly” applies here since we will look at inspection devices that infer as-yet unconfirmed defects. An “anomaly” deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. The word “defect” is only used when the...

Welcome to the new issue of the Pipeline Technology Journal (ptj). I am honoured to sit on the ptj Editorial Board and am pleased to introduce this issue’s editorial theme: leak detection and monitoring. The latest CONCAWE Performance of European Cross-country Oil Pipelines report (https://www.concawe.eu/) highlights that since 1971 (the start of...

Many factors affect how and when line pipe wil l experience a pipeline integrity threat, including materials, vintage, environment and loading conditions. An integrity threat of particular interest is stress corrosion cracking (SCC). SCC is a type of environmental assisted cracking (EAC) that can occ ur in line pipe under a ver y specific set of...