Tables from "Analysis of Pipeline Steel Corrosion Data From NBS (NIST) Studies Conducted Between 1922-1940 and Relevance to Pipeline Management" (NISTIR 7415)

Between 1911 and 1984, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) conducted a large
number of corrosion studies that included the measurement of corrosion damage to samples
exposed to real-world environments. One of these studies was an investigation conducted
between 1922 and 1940 into the corrosion of bare steel and wrought iron pipes buried
underground at 47 different sites representing different soil types across the Unites States.
The investigators concluded that so many diverse factors influence corrosion rates underground
that planning of proper tests and interpretation of the results were matters of considerable
difficulty and that quantitative interpretations or extrapolations could be done ?only in
approximate fashion? and attempted only in the ?restricted area? of the tests until more
complete information is available. Following the passage of the Pipeline Safety Improvement
Act in 2002 and at the urging of the pipeline industry, the Office of Pipeline Safety of the
U.S. Department of Transportation approached the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NBS became NIST in 1988) and requested that the data from this study be reexamined
to determine if the information handling and analysis capabilities of modern computers and
software could enable the extraction of more meaningful information from these data. The data
download, and the publications listed in the references, are a summary of the resulting
investigations.