PR-652-203802-R01 Computed Tomography for the Development of Standards for Anomaly Detection-Characterization

Abstract

This report documents the testing and inspection efforts undertaken to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of X-Ray Computed Tomography (XRCT) technology from the perspective of detection and quantification of flaws in pipelines. The fundamental motivation behind this project is to leverage the capabilities of the XRCT technology for highly accurate detection and characterization of flaws in pipelines. The accurate sizing and characterization of flaws/cracks in pipelines is of great consequence in providing effective and efficient operational and repair decisions in any integrity management program. As is the case with any emerging technology, comprehensive validation is needed before the technology can be considered mature enough to be effectively deployed by operators in the real-world or be used in the development of reference standards. This report discusses a validation approach and compares the XRCT results with those obtained from conventional NDE, and sectioning and microscopy, for synthetic and real-world features. Results are discussed in the context of the development of reference standards using synthetic flaws. The discussion provided in this document will be valuable for operators in understanding applicability, gaps, and future direction for the XRCT technology in the context of accurate flaw detection and characterization in pipelines. Results discussed in the report show that XRCT has the potential to enable the pipeline industry to establish a set of reference standards that can be used for a wide range of purposes, including technology development and qualification, personnel training and competency testing for inspection of flaws in pipelines. Once established as a proxy for "truth", XRCT will significantly minimize the need for frequent destructive testing for the generation of validation data further enabling the use in the development of reference standards. Within the purview of the work scope completed in this project, XRCT showed excellent results with synthetic features confirming that the technology (along with the process of generating synthetic features) is ready to be used in the development of reference standards using synthetic features. This work was funded in part, under the Department of Transportation, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Department of Transportation, or the U.S. Government.