The steel for both seamless and welded pipe shall be made by one or more of the following processes: open-hearth, electric furnace, or basic-oxygen. The weld seam of electric-resistance welded pipe in Grade B shall be heat treated after welding.
A53 pipe comes in three types and two grades,
- A53 Type F, which is longitudinally furnace butt welded or continuous welded (Grade A only)
- A53 Type E, which is longitudinally electric resistance welded (Grades A and B)
- A53 Type S, which is seamless pipe, produced by hot working, and possibly cold finishing, the steel (Grades A and B). ASTM A53, Type S is now currently an outdated specification and has been replaced by ASTM A106 specification for seamless carbon steel pipe.
Permissible Variations in Weights per Foot
Weight of any length shall not vary more than 10% over and 3.5% under that specified.
Chemical Requirements ASTM A53
|Type S||Type E||Type F|
|Gr. A||Gr.B||Gr. A||Gr. B||Gr. A|
|Carbon max. %||0.25||0.3||0.25||0.3||0.3|
|P, max. %||0.05||0.05||0.05||0.05||0.05|
|Sulfur, max. %||0.045||0.045||0.045||0.045||0.045|
|Nickel, max. %||0.4||0.4||0.4||0.4||0.4|
|Chromium, max. %||0.4||0.4||0.4||0.4||0.4|
|Mo, max. %||0.15||0.15||0.15||0.15||0.15|
|Vanadium, max. %||0.08||0.08||0.08||0.08||0.08|
|Properties||SMLS & ERW||Con. welded|
|Grade A||Grade B||Grade|
|Tensile Strength, min., psi||48,000||60,000||45,000|
|Yield Strength, min., psi||30,000||35,000||25,000|
- Seamless and Electric-Resistance-Welded — Bending, flattening, tensile on one length of pipe from each lot of 500 lengths or less of a size.
- Continuous-Weld — Bending, flattening, tensile
- Con. welded: Continuous-welded
|Couplings — Applied handling tight. Couplings, 2″ and smaller straight tapped, other sizes taper tapped.|
|Thread Protection — Applied to pipe 4″ and larger.|
|End Finish (unless otherwise specified) –|
|STD or XS, or wall thicknesses less than 0.500 in. (excluding XXS): Plain and beveled|
|All XXS and wall thicknesses over 0.500 in.: Plain end square cut.|
Hydrostatic inspection test pressures for plain end and threaded and coupled pipe are specified. Hydrostatic pressure shall be maintained for not less than 5 seconds for all sizes of seamless and electric-resistance-weld pipe.
Mechanical tests specified
Tensile Test — Transverse required on ERW for NPS 8 and large.
Sending Test (Cold) — STD and XS-NPS 2 and under XXS-NPS 1 1/4 and under.
|Application||Degree of Bend||Diameter of Mandrel|
|For Normal A53 Uses||90||12 x nom dia. of pipe|
|For Close Coiling||180||8 x nom dia. of pipe|
Flattening Test — NPS 2 and larger STD and XS. (Not required for XXS pipe.)
|View the PDF catalogue of ASTM A53 standard specification|