L51812 Evaluation of Laser-Welded Line Pipe

Laser-welded line pipe seam welds will not contain some of the types of weld imperfections associated with the ERW process. This report shows that laser-welded line pipe meets API 5L requirements and significantly exceeds the weld cleanliness and toughness necessary for most pipeline applications. Inclusion of laser-welded line pipe in the current API 5L line pipe specification was proposed by the above manufacturers in 1996. Recent balloting by API Committee 5 approved adoption of laser-welded line pipe as a separate process of manufacture, to be included in the next (forty-second) edition of API 5L in Product Specification Level (PSL) 1.