Mechanical analysis at different scales of gas pipelines

The actual safety margins of exercised gas pipelines depend on a number of factors that include the initial material properties and their evolution with time. These characteristics can be evaluated by mechanical tests of different complexity that can be performed on the pipeline steel at different scales. Alternative approaches based on traditional tensile tests and on instrumented indentation tests have been proposed and validated in some situations. The performances of these methodologies are compared in the present contribution for different pipe materials, in as-received and artificially aged conditions.