ILI data typically has an uncertainty associated with the reported anomaly size. Typically
this is reported as ±10 percent of the wall thickness for 80% of the data. This uncertainty is
also present in the failure pressure calculated from the ILI data. Pressure calculations are
often applied using a two parameter assessment method such as modB31G or an effective
area calculation such as KAPA or RSTRENG. Effective area calculations are often preferred
because there is less conservativeness in the failure calculation. Recently the authors studied
the effect of tool uncertainty on the uncertainty of the calculated failure pressure through
modeling. While modB31G calculations have a fair amount of uncertainty in the calculated
failure pressure, caused by the uncertainty of the tool sizing the flaw, effective area
calculations have less uncertainty. This paper shows an example of this reduced uncertainty
from theoretical calculations. As a result of this work we believe there are two reasons to use
effective area calculations with ILI measurements, one because the calculated failure
pressures are less conservative and two because there is less statistical uncertainty in the
calculated failure pressures.
Keywords: effective area method, RSTRENG, modified B31G, in-line inspection, measurement
uncertainty