The Society of Gas Operators is an Industry group focusing on the sharing of information and topics relevant to Gas Operations. Membership is predominantly from gas companies and suppliers in the North East United States.

2024-25 Schedule

Meeting Dates

  April 17, 2025

4/17/2025

5/15/2025

Paul Pirro - NYSEARCH

Over the years, the only way to prove that a PE pipe joint, whether produced by electrofusion or butt fusion, was defective after being installed in the field involved destructive testing by excavating, cutting out and dissecting. If a gas utility was found to have a defective PE joint after a major gas leak or incident, state regulators would request for additional joints to be excavated, cut out and dissected to determine whether they were acceptable.

Within the past 10 years, advancements in radiographic technology has made it possible to perform non-destructive evaluations (NDE) using 3 separate types of technology that have the capability of producing internal images and data to prove whether PE pipe joints are viable or contain a flaw. The three technologies are X-Ray testing, Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT), and Terahertz (Microwave) Testing. Each NYSEARCH NDE project involved fabrication of sample PE pipe joints with embedded defects for early trials, development, testing and verification of NDE tools and techniques.

NGA-NYSEARCH Development of Non-Destructive Evaluations of PE Pipe Joints Using X-Ray/Phased Array

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