• Major Construction Equipments Company Private Limited

Long Range Guided Wave Ultrasonic Inspection System

Corrosion and other defects that reduce the cross-sectional area of pipes cause major problems in the oil, chemical and the other industries. Most standard NDT methods measure the remaining pipe wall accurately, but over a small area so it is almost always uneconomic to inspect 100% of the pipe. In practice a pragmatic approach is usually adopted where the wall thickness at a number of points is measured and this information is used to determine the fitness for purpose of the pipe. However, this approach generally requires unrestricted access to the outer surface of the pipe and this is not possible, if the pipe is insulated, has protective coatings or is buried. This means that even external corrosion cannot be seen so that accurate measurements of the remaining wall can be made at the correct location on the pipe. Ultrasonic guided wave inspection offers a novel solution to many such inspection problems. Guided waves can be excited from easy to access locations on the pipe and will propagate many meters along the pipe, the returning echoes indicating the presence of corrosion or other pipe features.