API – American Petroleum Institute
ANSI – American National Standards Institute
ASME – American Society of Mechanical Engineers
ASTM – American Society of Testing and Materials
AISI – American Iron and Steel Institute
SAE – Society of Automotive Engineers
AWS – American Welding Society
HR – Hot Rolled
CR – Cold rolled
TS/UTS – Tensile Strength/Ultimate Tensile Strength
YS – Yield Strength
Dia – Diameter
DIM – Dimension
NPS – Nominal Pipe Size
ID – Inside Diameter
OD – Outside Diameter
WT – Wall Thickness
EU – External Upset
NU – Non-Upset
IJ – Integral Joint
STC – Short Threads Coupling
LTC – Long Threads Coupling
BTC – Buttress Threads Coupling
RL – Random Length
OL – Overall Length
SRL – Single Random Length (18 – 22ft)
DRL – Double Random Length (35 – 45ft)
TRL – Triple Random Length (50 – 65ft)
PE – Plain End
BBE – Bevel Both Ends
BSE – Bevel Small End
BOE – Bevel One End
BLE – Bevel Large End
TBE – Thread Both Ends
TLE – Thread Large End
TOE – Thread One End
TSE – Thread Small End
ERW – Electric Resistance Welded
EFW – Electric Fusion Welded
HFW – High Frequency Welded
CS – Carbon Steel
SS – Stainless Steel
SMLS – Seamless
LSAW – Longitudinal Submerged Arc Welded
SSAW – Spiral Submerged Arc Welded
HSAW – Helical Submerged Arc Welded
CHS – Circular Hollow Section
SHS – Square Hollow Section
RHS – Rectangular Hollow Section
+STA – Solution Annealed Treated
+NT – Normalized and Tempered
+QT – Quenched and Tempered
NDE/NDT – Non-Destructive Examination/Test
HT – Hydrostatic Test
UT – Ultrasonic Test
ECT – Eddy Current Test
RT – Radiograph Test
TMCP (+M): TMCP (Thermo-Mechanical Control Process) technology, which combines a controlled-rolling method and a controlled–cooling method, has contributed to further improving the high-strength and high-performance characteristics of steel plates.
Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG): Label applied to the pipe products used by petroleum exploration customers. OCTG includes casing, drill pipe, and oil well tubing, which, depending on their use, may be formed through welded or seamless processes.
Cut-to-Length (CTL): Processing to uncoil sections of flat-rolled steel or steel pipes and cut them into a desired length.
Deburring: The process used to smooth the sharp, jagged edges of a cut piece of steel.
Descaling: The process of removing scale from the surface of steel. Scale forms most readily when the steel is hot by union oxygen with iron. Common methods are: (1) crack the scale by use of roughened rolls and remove by a forceful water spray, (2) throw salt or wet sand or wet burlap on the steel just previous to its passage through the rolls.
Drawn Over Mandrel (DOM): A procedure for producing specialty tubing using a drawbench to pull tubing through a die and over a mandrel, giving excellent control over the inside diameter and wall thickness. Advantages of this technique are its inside and outside surface quality and gauge tolerance. Major markets include automotive applications and hydraulic cylinders.
Age Hardening: The term, as applied to soft or low-carbon steels, relates to a wide variety of commercially important, slow, gradual changes that take place in steel properties after the final treatment. These changes, which bring about a condition of increased hardness elastic limit and tensile strength with a consequent loss in ductility, occur during the period in which the steel is at normal temperatures.
Annealing (+A): A heat or thermal treatment process by which a previously cold-rolled steel coil is made more suitable for forming and bending. The steel sheet is heated to a designated temperature for a sufficient amount of time and then cooled.
Normalizing (+N): Material cooled in “open air”, not a controlled cooling process. Typically, it is quicker and cheaper than annealing as it does not tie up a furnace.
Quenching (+Q): A process of rapid cooling from an elevated temperature by contact with liquids, gases or solids.
Tempering (+T): Tempering is a method used to decrease the hardness, thereby increasing the ductility of the quenched steel, to impart some springiness and malleability to the metal.
Stress Relieving (+SR): A process of reducing residual stresses in a metal object by heating the object to a suitable temperature and holding for a sufficient time. This treatment may be applied to relieve stresses induced by casting, quenching, normalizing, machining, cold working or welding.
Bright Annealing (BA): Annealing is carried out in a controlled furnace atmosphere in order to minimize surface oxidation, resulting in a relatively bright surface.
As-Rolled (AR): the condition the material is in when it comes off the sizing rollers.
As-Welded (AW): Tubular products are not subject to thermal treatment after welding.
Cold Drawn (CD): The process of reducing the cross-sectional area of wire, bar, or tube by drawing the material through a die without any pre-heating.
Cold Finished: The term “cold finish” is an umbrella definition for any material that has had some sort of surface treatment.
Hot Finished: Hot finished is a process of heating the steel material beyond its recrystallization temperature, typically above 1000 degrees Celsius, and then rolling it out to give it a desired shape. The rolling process provides a finer grain structure, which improves the steel’s strength and toughness. The end product is typically a pipe or tube, which is used in various applications such as mechanical engineering, construction, and automotive industries.
Cold Rolled (CR): Rolling metal at a temperature below its softening point to create work-hardening.
Pickled: The process of chemically removing oxides and scale from the surface of the metal by immersion in a diluted acid bath so as to obtain a chemically clean surface.
Argon-Oxygen Decarburization (AOD): A process for further refinement of stainless steel through reduction of carbon content.
Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF): A pear-shaped furnace, lined with refractory bricks, that refines molten iron from the blast furnace and scrap into steel. Up to 30% of the charge into the BOF can be scrap, with hot metal accounting for the rest.
Electric Arc Furnace (EAF): Steel-making furnace where scrap is generally 100% of the charge. Heat is supplied from electricity that arcs from the graphite electrodes to the metal bath. Furnaces may be either an alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC). DC units consume less energy and fewer electrodes, but they are more expensive.
Ladle Metallurgy Furnace (LMF): An intermediate steel processing unit that further refines molten steel’s chemistry and temperature while still in the ladle. The ladle metallurgy step comes after the steel is melted and refined in the electric arc or basic oxygen furnace but before the steel is sent to the continuous caster.
Open Hearth Furnace: A broad, shallow hearth to refine pig iron and scrap into steel. Heat is supplied from a large, luminous flame over the surface, and the refining takes seven to nine hours. Open Hearths, at one time the most abundant steelmaking furnaces among integrated companies, have been replaced by the basic oxygen furnace.
Vacuum Degassing: An advanced steel refining facility that removes oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen under low pressures (in a vacuum) to produce ultra-low-carbon steel for demanding electrical and automotive applications. Normally performed in the ladle, the removal of dissolved gases results in cleaner, higher quality, more pure steel (see Ladle Metallurgy).
Vacuum Oxygen Decarburization (VOD): Process for further refinement of stainless steel through reduction of carbon content.
Electropolishing (EP): The process used on stainless steel tubing and fittings to simultaneously smooth, brighten, clean, and passivate the interior surfaces of these components. Electropolishing is an electrochemical removal process that selectively removes a thin layer of metal, including surface flaws and imbedded impurities. Electropolishing is a required surface treatment process for all ultra high-purity components used in the gas distribution systems of semiconductor manufacturers worldwide and many sterile water distribution systems of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Precipitation Hardening (PH): A small group of stainless steels with high chromium and nickel content, with the most common types having characteristics close to those of martensitic (plain chromium stainless class with exceptional strength) steels. Heat treatment provides this class with its very high strength and hardness. Applications for PH stainless steels include shafts for pumps and valves as well as aircraft parts.
Work Hardening: Hardening that takes place in a metal when work of any sort, such as bending, rolling, hammering, drawing, punching, and the like is done at a temperature below that at which recrystalization takes place.
Buttwelding (BW): Joining two edges or ends by placing one against the other and welding them.
Charpy Test: The impact test determines how many pounds of pressure will cause the part to break. A notched specimen, fixed at both ends, is struck behind the notch by a striker carried on a pendulum.
Creep: Slow permanent deformation in a metallic specimen produced by a relatively small steady force, below the elastic limit, acting for a long period of time.
Elongation: A measurement of the ductility of metal usually expressed as a percentage of the original length.
Hardness: It is the degree to which metal will resist cutting, abrasion, penetration, bending, and stretching.
Mechanical Properties: A metal’s properties determine its behavior under stress. Typical mechanical properties are Elongation, Hardness, Tensile strength, and Yield Strength.
Tensile Strength: measures the force required to pull a material to the point where it breaks. The tensile strength of a material is the maximum amount of tensile stress it can be subjected to before failure.
Yield Strength: the stress at which a material begins to deform plastically. Before the yield point, the material will deform elastically and return to its original shape when the applied stress is removed. Once the yield point is passed, some fraction of the deformation will be permanent and non-reversible.
