Ultrasonic Pig Research Articles

Zynq SoC FPGA-based water-immersible ultrasonic instrumentation for pipe inspection and gauging

Abstract A re-programmable Zynq system-on-chip (SoC) FPGA-based water-immersible 2-channel ultrasonic instrumentation has been designed and developed and it is mounted inside the IP67-grade enclosures, which is suitable for ultrasonic pipe inspection and gauging applications. The novel, compact Zynq SoC FPGA-based ultrasonic instrumentation system, powered by lithium-ion batteries for its operation over five hours, exhibits its adaptability for challenging environments, including its ability to travel through pipes carrying oil or water. One of the salient features of the 2-channel system is the capability to acquire echo signals using 12-bit/100 MSPS digitizer to provide highly accurate values of the inner diameter (ID) and wall thickness (WT) of the pipe under test. The system has been utilised to acquire and store 256 MB of A-Scan data in the DDR3 memory module of FPGA. Subsequent to five hours of acquisition, data was transferred to the computer to reconstruct B-Scan cross-sectional images for 300 mm nominal bore (NB) Stainless Steel (SS), and Carbon Steel (CS) pipes machined with volumetric and planar standard flaws. The B-Scan images could reveal both types of defects along with the location and size of these flaws. Such ultrasonic instrumentation has become an advanced tool to acquire a large volume of gauging data for pipes operating in harsh conditions, making it a vital asset for the inspection of pipes containing crude oil or processed water for petrochemical and nuclear industries. This paper provides brief details about the ultrasonic PIG instrument, with few inspection results obtained for SS and CS pipes.

Comparative Analysis of In-line Inspection Equipments and Technologies

Considering the global aging of pipelines and demand for new ones in more and more hostile environments, in-line inspection (ILI) based on the Non-Destructive Testing(NDT) was essential for pipeline operating company to protect their asset efficiently. This paper reviewed kinds of state of the art of ILI techniques and equipments, including geometry pig (GP), magnetic flux leakage pig (MFL PIG), ultrasonic pig (UT PIG), electromagnetic acoustic pig (EMAT PIG), eddy current pig (EC PIG), integrated function pig and specific function pig. Through the review of kinds of techniques, different approaches were compared, challenges and problems were highlighted and future research and direction was suggested.

Ultrasonic pig for submarine oil pipeline corrosion inspection

This paper introduces the design and development of an ultrasonic pig used for submarine oil pipeline corrosion inspection. Structure and functions of the equipment, as well as ultrasonic data acquisition system and off-line signal processing method are presented. The pig adopts a train-like structure including driver cups, batteries, ultrasonic transducers and data acquisition unit, which can detect and locate the corrosion of inspected pipeline. The data acquisition system is designed based on a digital signal processor and field programmable gate arrays structure to sample, process and compress the ultrasonic data and then store them in a hard disk. The off-line signal analysis method adopts a non-phase delay peak extraction algorithm to accurately calculate the pipe wall thickness. According to the thickness of each detected point, an ultrasonic image is traced by false color image, and then the potential defects are recognized by using a 3 × 3 grids template and classified according to American Petroleum Institute Standard. Both experimental and engineering testing results show that the pig is of perfect performance and could inspect defects greater than 10 × 10 mm2 successfully.

Autonomous system for oil pipelines inspection

Maintenance of oil pipelines is an issue of great concern for oil companies. Any possibility of leakage must be detected before the leakage occurs and a preventive action should be taken in order to avoid losses of oil and ecological disasters. One of the main causes of oil pipelines leakage is the corrosion of the bottom part of the pipeline due to accumulation of water and other corrosive substances. One of the methods used to check the conditions of the oil pipelines is the running of a data acquisition device through all the length of the pipeline (that can be km) to gather information about the corrosion and its position inside the pipeline. This device is commonly referred to as pig. The Brazilian oil company, PETROBRAS, wanting to have the technology of such device to detect corrosion in their oil pipelines proposed to the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo a joint project to the development of a pig that could run uninterruptedly in long oil pipelines gathering corrosion data for the preventive maintenance of their oil pipelines. The result of the project was the development of an ultrasonic pig with 16 ultrasonic transducers with on-board energy system and acquisition and storage systems. Also, comprised in the presented solution was the development of a software to analyze the collected data and give the position of the corrosion spots along the pipeline. This paper presents in detail the implementation and design issues related to the development of the ultrasonic pig. Also, some experimental data will be shown as confirmation of the effectiveness of the developed system.

Ultrasonn, an ultrasonic pig system for detecting damage in pipelines. (In German) : Goedecke. H.; Krieg, W.; Krieg, G. KfK-Nachrichten, Vol. 21, No. 1–2, pp. 37–41 (1989)

Ultrasonn, an ultrasonic pig system for detecting damage in pipelines. (In German) : Goedecke. H.; Krieg, W.; Krieg, G. KfK-Nachrichten, Vol. 21, No. 1–2, pp. 37–41 (1989)