World Pipelines - March 2020

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position information, and communicating with
the NDE data acquisition system. LATITUDE’s
ECU is integrated with Zetec’s TOPAZ instrument,
which is designed to streamline the set-up,
calibration, and control of the system. The ECU
is powered by two hot-swappable batteries that
provide up to seven hours of use.
LATITUDE encoding technology can be applied to
a variety of NDE sensor types including phased array,
TOFD, array eddy current, and others that warrant or
require a permanent data record. When combined
with inspection procedures such as scanning
involving a detection-only approach, personnel and
inspection time is significantly reduced compared
to what a typical automated UT procedure would
require. The result is increased efficiency and
improved overall production.
For corrosion mapping, LATITUDE enables the
encoding of high-resolution thickness data while
manually manipulating the probe, resulting in a
composite thickness map that requires little to no
post-processing for analysis.
Figure 1 shows an example of a thickness map
generated using LATITUDE, with a corrosion array
probe on a section of service water piping with
severe internal corrosion pitting. The scanned
area shown is a 10 in. square, contains upwards of
30 000 discrete UT measurements, and was acquired
in less than two minutes of scanning. Furthermore,
the data files created using this approach can be
imported into finite-element analysis software to
perform engineering analyses of the component with
wall loss.
A successful corrosion mapping inspection is
the result of the combination of a high probability
of detection, and the confidence that the full area
of interest has been totally covered. The broader
availability of two-axis scanners has helped to
increase confidence in the surface coverage.
However, the lack of agility and extra time and
cost required to deploy the scanners has opened
the door to new 2D encoded scanners like NDT
PaintBrush, which is designed to determine the probe
position and the scanner’s orientation, and LATITUDE,
which can collect high-quality encoded data without
a mechanical rack or carrier.
While fully automated UT offers several
advantages for critical inspections, the ability to
freely move a probe by hand while tracking probe
position and orientation combines the best of
both worlds – detailed records, a tactile feedback,
and immediate visualisation without extra cost or
complexity.
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