Improvement of the Test Equipment for a Stress Corrosion Lab through the Axiomatic Design

Choosing the best material for a given design environment is more and more important in the modern Oil and Gas industry. This issue affects the economical sustainability and the integrity of the oil field equipment since the aqueous environment where there are hydrogen sulphide or carbon dioxide is highly corrosive. Many experiments have been drawn out in order to investigate the strength of common carbon steels and corrosion resistant alloys in different conditions and many others are needed; nevertheless achieving reliable and accurate data for these kind of tests is quite difficult because of both the complexity of the subject and the lack of a standard test procedure among laboratories. Another difficulty is represented by the need to customize the test device and the system whose they take part in order to overcome several degrees of freedom which are present and could affect the accuracy of the results. At first the Axiomatic Design theory is used for identifying those critical aspects of the standard proof ring device which may affect the results from stress corrosion tests. After, this method is employed to drive and evaluate various equipment customizations to achieve results in compliance with the NACE TM0177 regulation.