Application and Advancement of EMAT ILI Technologies for the Inspection of Cracks in Dents

Abstract

Pipeline dents and mechanical damage remain an integrity threat within the Oil & Gas pipeline industry. Such features typically consist of a localized deformation of the pipe wall. Under certain conditions, cracking may develop within or adjacent to the area of deformation due to stress concentration factors resulting from the deformation itself or from secondary damage such as a scrape or gouge. Conventional inline inspection technologies consistently to date have not explicitly addressed inspection capabilities for cracking within dents. This paper presents the results of a collaborative technical effort to assess and advance the abilities of EMAT inline inspection technologies to identify and characterize such mechanical damage features as found in liquid pipelines. The background and application of these advanced technologies for the targeted threats is discussed, as well as the experimental testing performed and results achieved.

A Review of Inspection Methods for Continuously Monitoring PVC Drinking Water Mains

“…4a. In [59], to detect axial cracks in a metal pipe, an inline inspection device with an electromagnetic acoustic transducer excited ultrasonic surface waves in the circumferential direction. The time and power of the reflected signal made it possible to create an axial pipe image to detect dents.…”

Literature Review: Theory and Application of In-Line Inspection Technologies for Oil and Gas Pipeline Girth Weld Defection

“…However, advanced oil and gas pipeline in-line inspection technology is still needed to inspect the defects of long-distance transport pipelines in operation, which have multiple girth welds, so as to realize the overall girth weld defect inspection of long-distance transport pipeline. For nearly three decades, multiple technologies have been developed and applied in the inspection of oil and gas pipeline defects, including corrosion, stress corrosion and crack, such as, high-resolution MFL inspection [ 8 ], liquid ultrasonic inspection [ 9 ] and natural gas pipeline electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) crack inspection [ 10 ], but as for the girth weld defect inspection, it is still in the exploration and development stage. Due to the irregular shape and profile of girth weld, the accuracy of inspection equipment is affected significantly.…”