PR-335-183837-R03 NDE Technician Performance Evaluation Through Practical Application Blind Trials

Abstract

PRCI commissioned this project (NDE-2-7) to further investigate the effects of human performance factors on Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) performance for conducting Magnetic Particle Inspections (MPI) and Ultrasonic Thickness Testing (UT) on pipeline components. MPI and UT techniques were targeted for this research project because they are among the most well understood and utilized NDE technologies for in-service oil and gas pipeline assessments. This project was conducted in parallel with another PRCI NDE-2-7 project (PR-580-163710), which focused on evaluating the impacts of training program quality on NDE human performance. This NDE-2-7 project evaluated human performance factors by conducting a round-robin type study, where service providers were asked to conduct MPI and UT examinations on blind samples with known defects. The project consisted of initially conducting an inventory of pipeline samples that had been removed from service and were available at PRCI's Technology Development Center (TDC). Based on this inventory, samples with degradation typical to what may be observed and inspected in the field were selected for use in the round-robin study. Baseline NDE was performed on all of the samples to establish and quantify the levels of degradation present. A detailed test plan was then developed to outline the human performance factors that would be evaluated during the round-robin study, including how these parameters would be assessed and documented. All of the round-robin participants were proctored, and the identified human performance factors were assessed during the round-robin testing. The human performance factors were than compared with the accuracy of the NDE results, to draw conclusions on the impact of the human factors on the NDE performance.