GRP Piping Failures
Glass-fibre Reinforced Plastic pipe (GRP) systems, also known as FRP pipe systems, have been succ essful in the world’s markets for more than 50 years. During this time, they have developed into a modern pipe material that is predominantly convincing thanks to its lightweight, corrosion resistance, a smooth inner surface, and easy installation.
Continuously wound GRP pipes are also popular in AP and the Middle East where they have provided well-accepted concepts to many industries and in many applications for many years. GRP pipes also had a proven design life known in some case histories for a design life of more than 3 3 years.
All piping, in general, has a certain requirement related to design and installation. GRP piping as a semi-rigid material shares over 80% of these requirements, in this paper we wil l highlight the remaining specific requirements related to system design, materials qualification, and site installation.
Although we will try to present several modes of failure of GRP piping as real cases in terms of catastrophic failure, weeping De-lamination, cracking. we will share several root causes reports identifying what went wrong in terms of installation, design, operation, and testing. The analysis will not consider visual criteria only, but also some engineering tools and NDT methods/techniques to identify the defect, type, size, location trying to propose the best solution to avoid reoccurrence.