Wednesday 19 September
Session 3B – NDT Applications
Ultrasonic NDT at on-line plant temperatures
Stephen P Kelly, Doosan Babcock Energy Ltd
Ian Atkinson, KANDE International Ltd
Chris Gregory, Phoenix Inspection Systems Ltd
John Paul Hood, The University of Paisley
Colin Brett, EON
The power generation, petrochemical, process and offshore sectors all frequently operate at temperatures that are beyond the capabilities of current contact inspection methods. The necessary outages to perform inspections at lower temperatures are known to cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds for every day, as a result of lost production. There would be significant value therefore in developing inspection methods that would reduce this time off-line, either through monitoring of known conditions or by performing scanned inspections on-line.
Ultrasonic inspection methods are therefore being developing to enable monitoring of a fixed location at up to 600°C, and scanned inspection at temperatures of up to 400°C. This paper describes developments to date which cover a range of issues in order to achieve this:
- Recently developed piezoceramic transducer for permanent attachment with improved high temperature capability.
- Manufacture and attachment methods that can withstand extreme temperatures and thermal cycling.
- Thin film technology using Aluminium Nitride.
- Liquid cooled probe technology and scanner capability that would enable automated scanning.
- System calibration to take account of temperature effects and achieve accurate locating and sizing of defect indications.
Petrochemical application of the code case – ASME Code Case 22354-9
John D McMillan
Mechanical Integrity Inc
All codes are subject to individual interpretation, often the intent of those responsible for developing the code case is not met in every day practice. Indeed many times technology overtakes the standards which are written by experienced individuals. The Code Case 2235-9 allows manufacturers to replace radiographic inspection with automated ultrasonics, usually considered a less expensive inspection option. This paper describes the application of procedures proposed, their deficiencies and pitfalls, and the corrective actions taken in the field to attempt to meet the code case.
Trends in the automotive industry steer new NDT applications
Paul Buschke, John Lewis
GE Inspection Technologies
The automobile industry must take the requirements for more safety into account (product liability) in addition to the stricter regulations concerning environmental protection and crash safety as well as the increased comfort requirements of the driver. Costly recall actions, ever increasing demands on quality management and the changing statutory basic conditions with simultaneous, keener competition oblige the industry to take economic action.
The lightweight construction of vehicles (lightweight material and lightweight construction) are of special importance especially owing to vehicle requirements. In addition to the application of new materials, joining and bonding technologies are always being re-evaluated due to technical and economical reasons.
Application of ultrasonic methods for determination of thermal action parameters and variation of concrete structure properties in case of fire
Vladimir A Syasko, Anna N Sokolova, Grigory V Sinitsky, Alexander A Popov
Constanta Ltd, Pob 89, St-Petersburg, 198095, Russia. T: +7 812 3722903; E:office@constanta.ru
Concrete structures exposed to long effect of high temperature in case of fire change their chemical structure, which in its turn results in essential variation of their physical-mechanical and strength properties. At present in most cases laboratory methods of samples study are used (chemical analysis, microhardness measuring, roentgen phase analysis, calorimetric method) for study of concrete structures after fire aimed at determination of the temperature and the length of exposure, which are labour-intensive and long.
Processes of cement stone dehydration, destruction of its elements, loosening of its mass, appearing of microcracks result in variation of concrete acoustic properties. The known acoustic methods based on measuring of ultrasound propagation speed in external (surface) layers of concrete structures make it possible to determine only integral properties, not providing determination of the time of impact and respectively the depth of high temperature impact.
The objective of the work is study of the possibility of application and development of ultrasound methods of study of concrete structures after fire, which could provide the possibility of separate determination of temperature and the length of impact, as well as variation of concrete strength after fire.
In order to reach the above objective the following studies were carried out, and the developments are given in the paper in detail:
- a device for concrete samples heating has been made and study of ultrasound speed depending on period and heating temperature was performed;
- a method of ultrasound speed measuring by depth using prospect-holes with the diameter of 16 mm on samples and real structures has been developed, a set of low-frequency specialised transformers for such studies has been made;
- a method and a program for separate calculation of temperature and duration of heating in the control zone as well as measuring of concrete structure strength variation have been developed.
Robotic-based reconfigurable Lamb wave scanner for non-destructive evaluation
G Dobie, W Galbraith, M Friedrich, G Pierce, G Hayward
Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, University of Strathclyde, 204 George Street, Glasgow G1 1XW, UK
Robotic vehicles are receiving increasing attention due to their attractiveness in terms of cost, safety and their accessibility to areas where manual inspection is not practical. This paper details work on a reconfigurable Lamb wave scanner using autonomous robotic platforms. The reconfigurable scanner is built from a fleet of miniature robotic agents, each with an air coupled ultrasonic Lamb wave transmitter or receiver. These agents can transmit Lamb waves between each other to interrogate the material and efficiently create a C-scan of the test component. The system can reconfigure to optimise the placement of the available robots on a given structure. The aggregated nature of the scanner makes it both adaptable and robust – agents can be removed and the system will reconfigure to compensate. The transmission of Lamb-waves over distances up to 1 m makes also makes the scanner highly efficient. The authors have successfully demonstrated a reconfigurable Lamb wave scanner. The scanner can detect artificial defects of 10% of the sample's depth with a positional accuracy of 1 cm. The system is fully automated and the robots can work autonomously for up to 3 hours on a single battery charge.
Downhole tubular monitoring techniques: current state-of-the-art technology
Colin C Hardisty
Well Integrity Specialist, Schlumberger Data and Consulting Services (DCS), Aberdeen
Well integrity logs are frequently acquired to assess the condition of downhole oilfield tubulars and in some cases to simultaneously evaluate the quality of annular cement sheath. The range of applicable tools is considerable ranging from relatively basic mechanical calipers for internal radius monitoring purposes to more sophisticated ultrasonic devices which are employed when internal radius, absolute wall thickness and cement sheath quality are the combined survey objectives. This paper will focus on recognised problems associated with downhole tubular condition (casing, tubing, liners) and also, through real life examples, illustrate the effectiveness of current technology. Downhole tools based on extremely different physics of measurement will be discussed including mechanical, ultrasonic and electromagnetic.
Session 4B – Inspection Qualification Workshop
A prototype demonstrator for an Inspection Qualification Multi-Agent System (IQMAS)
Neil McLean, Anthony Gachagan and Gordon Hayward
Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XW, UK. T: +44 (0)141 548 3477; E: n.mclean@eee.strath.ac.uk
Stephen McArthur
Institute for Energy and Environment, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XW, UK
NDT Inspection Qualification (IQ) under the ENIQ methodology combines experimental data from test-block trials with physical reasoning and modelling of responses from identified worst-case defects. This process can be extremely time-consuming, requiring extensive work by an experienced engineer.
At BINDT 2006, the design of a novel Multi-Agent system (MAS) for NDT was presented. The purpose of the system is to allow new and existing software tools for generating, collating and presenting data supporting IQ to be automated and integrated in an open and easily extendable manner.
This paper gives an account of the realisation of the system to the point of a working prototype, demonstrating its application to a practical IQ scenario. A user interface for the system is described, allowing a user to submit IQ scenarios to be operated upon by the various agents in the system, including worst case defect analysis, in an intuitive and consistent manner.
In addition, an account is given of the development of a new agent within the system which uses case-based reasoning to identify existing test block trial data relevant to a given inspection qualification scenario, and reports to the user the results of the most relevant trials.
