Inside the Tenaris (USA) test laboratories

Tenaris is one of the leading global manufacturers of steel pipes for the energy industry and for other industrial applications, such as mechanics and the automotive sector. The global structure is formed by an integrated network of production sites, research and development laboratories and service centres.

The Tenaris facilities in Conroe and Baycity, Texas – leaders together with Waterjet Corporation in this prestigious success – manufacture pipes without welding, obtained through a hot rolling process dedicated specifically to the search and extraction of oil commonly called OCTG (Oil Country Tubular Goods) and pipes manufactured by electric resistance welding (ERW) processes.

In recent years, the legislation that regulates the production of pipes for pipelines intended for the hydraulic industry has become radically stricter following the worst environmental disaster in American history – a 106-day oil spill between 20 April and 4 August 2010, off the Gulf of Mexico from the Macondo well of the Deepwater Horizon platform, at a depth of 1,500 metres. The rules concerning the production of deep water drilling/extraction pipes have been revised and are now stricter. To ensure greater safety in the facilities, governments impose the use of high-end pipes, such as those manufactured by Tenaris: pipes that must therefore respond positively to very stringent acceptance tests.

For each casting, the laboratories that check the quality of the Tenaris pipes perform several destructive and non-destructive acceptance tests: tensioning, compression and cryogenic.

Waterjet Corporation machines intended for cutting samples have to withstand extremely high production rates: reliability therefore becomes an essential feature. The three machines installed in the Tenaris facilities in Conroe and Baycity, Texas, continuously guarantee these very high production rates.

The technologies previously used would cut the samples with a disk and plasma: both technologies develop much heat and imply an inevitable thermal deformation of the material that compromises the reliability of the subsequent test phases. With water cutting, which is a cold cut, a separation cut, the chemical and physical characteristics of the material remain unaltered and the cutting phases of the test samples are much more efficient.

“For Tenaris we have created a 5-axis machine with a cutting angle of ±69°: indeed, the cutting head must be able to follow the curvature of the pipe to make transverse, axial and lateral cuts,” says Massimo Russo, who was responsible for personally monitoring the sales and testing phases of the three machines installed in the Tenaris production sites in Texas. “The machines designed for Tenaris are characterised by a high level of customisation: they were built with two separate baskets, in which there are several work areas intended for housing the pipes that will be subjected to cutting. The defined areas and the baskets are preset within the numerical control to automate the cutting processes according to specific programs. The software manager taking care of the Tenaris production sends a work program that is loaded by the numerical control and the operator must exclusively handle the pipe loading phases intended for the tests within the indicated areas, based on the specifications. Once the cut is made, all the information about the processing returns to the server according to the digital information flow management protocol set forth by Industry 4.0 policies. The software that guides the machines installed in Tenaris has been specifically designed to be able to interface quickly and intuitively with that of the company”.

High productivity, unparalleled cutting performance, total machine customisation: the distinctive features of this prestigious success achieved by Waterjet Corporation.