Ultrasonic and magnetic Barkhausen emission measurements for characterization of pipeline steels

To ensure that the aging pipeline infrastructure in the USA can be safely operated, the mechanical properties of the pipe materials must be verified. It is hypothesized that characterization of the pipeline steels and their microstructures through nondestructive methods will allow for the estimation of the mechanical properties of interest, namely yield strength, tensile strength, toughness, and ductile-to-brittle transition temperature. This work will discuss how material properties, such as microstructure and chemical composition, affect the mechanical properties as well as strategies for measuring the material properties nondestructively using magnetic Barkhausen emission and ultrasonic velocity and attenuation measurements. Preliminary results on a limited sample set will be shown and challenges encountered will be discussed.