As corrosion is one of the major risks of failure for pipelines & structures, an accurate and flexible tool
to analyze the effectiveness of an existing Cathodic Protection (CP) installation within its specific
environment is a key element of any integrity management system. Most of the existing CP modules for
integrity management are facing one or more of the following limitations:
- they are unable to take into account the increased influence of interference as e.g. caused by
the trend to locate all utilities within the same right-of-way or common energy corridors;
- they are unable to cope with complex geometries and environmental variations;
- being based on a combination of experience, experimental data and heuristics they do not meet
the accuracy level of computer models;
- the rigid structure of existing CP modules makes data exchange with other integrity
management modules labor-intensive and troublesome.
This paper describes a unique modeling platform that allows predicting the true protection level of a
pipeline network of arbitrary complexity. Combining this unique simulation technology with data from
field survey campaigns gives operators unambiguous information of the corrosion protection level of the
pipeline, thereby allowing making critical decisions with respect to excavating and repairing pipelines.
As a case study, details will be presented on the integration of the platform with the pipeline database
from a gas transmission operator with about 12.000 km of pipeline, most of it situated in congested
right-of-ways and presence of DC-traction stray current interference.
It will be demonstrated in this paper that by using the platform described above, the gas operator is
able to control and optimize the CP of their pipeline network, hereby considerably reducing the on-site
interventions.
Keywords: Simulation software, cathodic protection, pipeline network, ECDA, external corrosion direct
assessment, TRU, transformer rectifier unit, IK, pipeline potential