HTHA Inspection Test Protocol

(January 6, 2011)

1General

The Examinee shall be familiarized with this Protocol before taking the Shell HTHA Inspectiontest at Westhollow Technology Center.

The Shell HTHA Inspection test include written and practical examinations. The practical examination requires the Examinee to perform HTHA inspection of test samples per Shell’s HTHA inspection techniques and procedures, including system setup, data collection, data analysis, and reporting.

Prior to the test, the Examinee shall have received and completed Shell HTHA inspection training. In addition, the Examinee shall be a current ASNT Level II or III or equivalentcertificate holder in UT. The Examinee shall also have received training and/or been certified on manual UT crack detection and sizing. The Examinee must have supporting document to prove meeting the above requirements before he/she will be allowed to take this performance demonstration test.

No form of data, electronic or otherwise, shall be retained by the Examinee after the test is completed.

2Written Examination

The written examination will test the Examinee’s general knowledge and understanding of Shell’s HTHA inspection techniques/procedures and their applications.

The examination will be timed. A maximum of one hour will be allowed for the Examinee to finish the written examination.

3Practical Examination

The written examination will test the Examinee’s ability to perform inspection per Shell’s HTHA inspection procedures.

The examination will be timed. A maximum of four hours will be allowed for the Examinee to finish the practical examination.

Test Samples

Each Examinee will be supplied with a test set comprising twosamples without weld/HAZ and twosamples with weld/HAZ. The material will be carbon steel and/or C-0.5Mo steel, with or without stainless steel cladding or weld overlay.

The following potential flaw mechanisms may be included in each sample. Test samples may also be unflawed.

Base metal flaws:

  • HTHA
  • Delamination
  • Inclusions
  • Wall loss
  • Disbonding between base metal and stainless steel cladding or weld overlay

Weld/HAZ flaws:

  • HTHA
  • Cracks
  • Lack of penetration
  • Lack of sidewall fusion
  • Undercut
  • Porosity
  • Excessive penetration
  • Slag inclusions

Test Report

The Examinee shall present a completed test report. As a minimum,this report shall include the following:

  • Company name, test date, Examinee name, phone number, and E-mail address.
  • Summary of inspection findings of each test sample:
  • any HTHA detected
  • depth of detected HTHA
  • any crack detected
  • depth of detected cracks
  • presence of fissures associated with the detected crack
  • no HTHA or crack
  • other flaws observed (lack of penetration, lack of fusion, porosity, inclusion, etc.)
  • Inspection methods and data used to supporting the findings
  • methods used on each sample
  • data recording locations, including reference locations, representative locations (if no flaw observed), and damage locations (if HTHA and/or crack is observed)
  • data from each data recording location, including all the recorded plots, measured values, and calculated values

The Examinee shall turn in all test notes to the test Administrator at the end of the exam.

The Examinee shall not share their knowledge of the test results in any form with any other individual/party.

4Grading

Examinee performance will be evaluated in the following areas:

  • Written Examination

The passing grade for the written examination is 70%.

  • Practical Examination
  • Detection/Characterization - The Examinee will be required to correctly identify and report all HTHA and cracks in the test set. For each reported crack, the examinee must also correctly identify whether there are HTHA fissures associated with the crack.
  • False Calls - A false call is defined as the reporting of HTHA or crack within a sample that contains no HTHA or crack. The Examinee must not have any false call in order to pass the test.
  • Sizing - The Examinee will be required to report the maximum depth(s) of the reported HTHA and/or crack, as applicable, in each sample. For any sample that contains weld/HAZ and has reported HTHA in the base metal and in weld/HAZ, the maximum depths shall be reported for the base metal and weld/HAZ, respectively. The sizing error must not exceed 0.1” to be successful.
  • Data Recording and Reporting – Data must be recorded and shall be sufficiently shown in the report to substantiate the summary of findings per the Shell HTHA inspection procedures. Similarly data not needed to substantiate the summary of finding per the Shell HTHA inspection procedures shall not be recorded or included in the report. Points will be deducted for insufficient and excessive data recording/reporting. The passing grade for data recording and reporting is 80%.

A successful Examinee must pass requirements in all the above categories.

The test result of pass/fail will be reported to the Examinee within four weeks after the test is completed.

5Re-testing

Any unsuccessful Examinee will be allowed to re-take the test 3 months after the previous test.

A successful Examinee will be considered qualified for HTHA inspection at Shell and its affiliates’ facilities. The qualification will be effective for six years. A re-test will be required to renew the qualification. No re-training is required for the re-test. If re-training is taken, the above test protocol applies. Without re-training, the protocol is modified as follows: The practical examination will include a total of four samples: two samples without weld/HAZ and two with weld/HAZ; and the maximum allowed time for the practical examination is eight hours.

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