Phantom development applied to industrial tomography in composite material pipeline

Abstract

Computed tomography allows the images reconstruction and the internal details visualization of the internal structure of the inspected volume, which generates a competitive gain for this technique in relation to the other NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) methods. Within this context, Petrobras has an R&D project in partnership with UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) to develop a field microCT for pipeline inspection with adhesive and laminated joints made of composite material. This work developed phantoms in polymeric material for study some parameters, such as contrast resolution, spatial resolution and dimensional metrology. Four phantoms were projected and manufatured for theses purposal. The objective was to study, measure and qualify parameters for the field microCT. The development and evaluation of these phantoms are presented throughout this work. It was possible to observe a good difference between the materials inserted in the contrast resolution phantom through the grey values measurement. Beyond it, it was achieved a spatial resolution about 200 ?m for this phantom, which is a reasonable value for microCT applied to pipelines inspection. Finally, the statistical analyses shown a good data quality and were very usefull to understand the results, which provide a good traceability for them.