An Ultrasonic In-line Inspection System on Crude Oil Pipelines

Abstract

The ultrasonic in-line inspection is one of the important ways to inspect the wall-loss defects on-line for crude oil pipeline. As an integrative device, ultrasonic in-line inspection system contains complex mechanism, electronic instruments and a computer to achieve ultrasonic inspection, orientation, guarantee technology, signal processing, data management and project executer. An ultrasonic in-line inspection system with 20 ultrasonic channels is developed to meet this need. The multi-channels ultrasonic inspection system consists of main and sub-structure. The system locates the corrosion by course wheel orientation, welding line modification, outer orientation modification and revolving angle orientation. Experiments under the water show that it can inspect and display the shape, size and location of the corrosion of the pipeline and the data acquisition, management, storage and image display can satisfy the inspection of long-distance pipelines in practice.