Abstract:The diversity of ultrasound techniques used in oil and gas pipeline plants provides us with a wealth of information on how to exploit this technology when combined with other techniques, in order to improve the quality of analysis. The fundamental theory of ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technology is offered, along with practical limitations as related to two factors (wave types and transducers). The focus is limited to the two main techniques used in pipe plants: First, straight beam evaluation a… Show more
“…Als Ultraschall bezeichnet man mechanische Wellen mit Frequenzen über 16 kHz und somit oberhalb des Hörbereichs des Menschen [15]. Je nach Medium können sich Schallwellen unterschiedlich ausbreiten und werden in Longitudinal-, Transversal-und Oberflächenwellen unterteilt [16]:…”
“…Als Ultraschall bezeichnet man mechanische Wellen mit Frequenzen über 16 kHz und somit oberhalb des Hörbereichs des Menschen [15]. Je nach Medium können sich Schallwellen unterschiedlich ausbreiten und werden in Longitudinal-, Transversal-und Oberflächenwellen unterteilt [16]:…”
“…Ultrasonic testing is commonly used in the industries because of its ease to use, accuracy and its ability not to affect a material in any way for several purposes, one of which is quality control. It is also very useful in testing the integrity of materials used in the formation of pipes [23]. Ultrasonic waves require a medium to transmit its ultrasonic waves because it does not transmit well through air, solids or gels.…”
Section: The Ultrasonic Testing For Pipeline Defectsmentioning
The major pollutant induced by pipeline failure in Oil and Gas industry has been mitigated over the years using non-destructive techniques like liquid penetrant, magnetic particles, radiographic, ultrasound and eddy current testing. The eddy current technique’s advantage over the other testing devices remains the best suitable in the design and construction of the devices due to the nature of the pipeline materials. For this present work, a pre-test-post-test experimental design was used to test devices on a defect free pipe and a pipe with machined defects of known dimensions and different orientation (longitudinal and axial) after construction. The defect detection was done using electromagnetic technique of eddy current by exciting a coil with power supply and placed close to the tested pipe surface, as a micro-controller was used to track the irregularities on the material surface by computer systems. The device set up for the test was a coil with a power supply of a DC battery connected with micro-controller of a quantization level of 4.88mV. For visual display, result obtained indicates no variation in the amplitude of the pulse as demonstrated by a pipe with no defect while variations (deeps) occurred in the pipe with defects as the coil was traversed over the defect. The orientation had no significant effects on the sensitivity and effectiveness of the device. Results validation was done using a non-destructive technique by visual inspection. Thus, device has shown its effectiveness in detecting defects irrespective of the orientation. Similarly, the size of the defects is a determinant in the amplitude variation of the pulse displayed which implies at higher sensitivity, a high frequency is required.
“…Ultrasonic testing allows technicians to evaluate the volumetric reliability of the pipeline; it means that, with ultrasound signals, it is possible to localize and identify many discontinuities in materials that are both on and below the surface of the pipeline [11]. Many PIGs use the ultrasonic pulse-echo method to perform the automatic pipeline inspection because it provides wall thickness measurements with a greater accuracy than manual inspection or other techniques [12,13,14,15].…”
Pipeline inspection gauges (PIGs) carry out automatic pipeline inspection with nondestructive testing (NDT) technologies like ultrasound, magnetic flux leakage, and eddy current. The ultrasonic straight beam allows technicians to determine the wall thickness of the pipeline through the time of flight diffraction (TOFD), providing the pipeline reconstruction and allowing the detection of several defects like dents or corrosion. If the pipeline is of a long distance, then the inspection process is automatic, and the fluid pressure pushes the PIG through the pipeline system. In this case, the PIG velocity and its axial alignment with the pipeline cannot be controlled. The PIG geometry, the pipeline deformations, and the girth welds cause a continuous chattering when the PIG is running, removing the transducers perpendicularity with the inspection points, which means that some echoes cannot be received. To reduce this problem, we propose a novel method to design a sensor carrier that takes into account the angularity and distance effects to acquire the straight beam echoes. The main advantage of our sensor carrier is that it can be used in concave and convex pipeline sections through geometric adjustments, which ensure that it is in contact with the inner pipe wall. Our improvement of the method is the characterization of the misalignment between the internal wall of the pipeline and the transducer. Later, we analyzed the conditions of the automatic pipeline inspection, the existing recommendations in state-of-the-art technology, and the different mechanical scenarios that may occur. For the mechanical design, we developed all the equations and rules. At the signal processing level, we set a fixed gain in the filtering step to obtain the echoes in a defined distance range without saturating the acquisition channels. For the validation, we compared through the mean squared error (MSE) our sensor carrier in a straight pipe section and a pipe elbow of steel versus other sensor carrier configurations. Finally, we present the design parameters for the development of the sensor carrier for different pipeline diameters.
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