Gas pipelines need to be traced due to the sensitive usage and the number of involved companies. In present research, the use of laser engraving for marking API pipes is investigated. Through an automatic process, this method of marking creates durable and high quality marks. For this purpose, related standards have been reviewed to obtain the maximum allowable groove depth on the pipes. After ensuring the acceptance of the process in the standards, initial samples have been engraved to find the appropriate laser characteristics, required to have adequate material removal and visible mark on the test pieces. The Taguchi method is used to design the experiments of laser engraving process with different parameters and to determine the effect of each one on the process. All experiments have been done with 80 W pulsed Nd:YAG laser with a pulse width of 1µs. Analyses are performed for two simultaneous outputs in order to reach the deepest engraving in the shortest time. To validate the results, some samples are engraved with optimized parameters. The results admitted the optimized condition predicted via Taguchi method. The effect of each parameter on the depth of engraving and the process time were also analyzed and it was found that the laser power is the most effective parameter. In order to control the material structure and its properties after the process, metallography, hardness, and tensile tests were performed. Although there is a small change in the properties of the original material, the results satisfied standard’s requirements. Consequently, the absence of heat-affected zone (HAZ) at the laser engraved region was observed. Simulation of laser engraving is also performed in Abaqus/Explicit. For the modeling of material evaporation during the process, element deletion is considered. In this research, by using several subroutines like VUMAT, VUAMP, and VUSDFLD and a Python based program, in addition to defining a non-uniform heat flux in Abaqus/Explicit, elements are deleted as soon as they exceed the boiling temperature. One pulse of laser is simulated through an axisymmetric model to investigate the temperature field in engraved region. The simulation was verified based on a previous job, and then used to predict the temperature field in the current research. The results show that the pulse duration is so small that the temperature reaches the ambient temperature shortly after each pulse. Therefore, there is no heat accumulation during the process. The absence of HAZ in the experiments was also concluded based on the simulation results. Keywords: Laser engraving, API pipes, Taguchi, Abaqus/Explicit, non-uniform heat flux, element deletion