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Proceedings of the 2012 9th International Pipeline Conference IPC2012 September 24-28, 2012, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

IPC2012-90032
ULTRASONIC GUIDED WAVE FOR PIPELINE AND STORAGE TANK CORROSION DEFECT INSPECTION
Weibin Wang1 Haolin Tong2 Hongjun Dong3 Muyang Ai1 Kai Wu4

Zhanjun Feng1

1. PetroChina Pipeline R&D Center, kjfengzj@petrochina.com.cn Langfang, Hebei, China, 065000 2. Zhejiang University, Control Science and Engineering Department, Zhejiang, China 3. PetroChina Pipeline Company, Langfang, Hebei, China, 065000 4. Lanzhou Oil&Gas Transmission Sub-company, PetroChina Pipeline Company, Lanzhou 4.

KEYWORDS Ultrasonic Guided Wave, Pipeline, Storage Tank, Defect Inspection ABSTRACT Pipeline and storage tank corrosion defect inspection is one of the most important concerns for integrity management of oil & gas storage and transportation industry. Besides the internal inspection for pipeline, tri-axis high-resolution magnetic leakage inspection technique which is applied for trunk line inspection, long range ultrasonic guided wave technique based on Lamb wave is adopted for inaccessible part inspection in technique package for pipeline inspection in PetroChina. Corrosion in the tank floor and wall is a serious threat for environmental and economic safety. Owing to the capabilities of ultrasonic guided wave which are long-range, in-plane propagation, in-service storage tank floor/wall inspection becomes possible by employing an array of SH wave transducers mounting on the edge of the outer storage tank floor. At this point, ultrasonic guided wave shows its capability for pipeline and storage tank corrosion defect inspection. With the advancement of high-performance transducer, its capability will be boosted for even longer and remoter detection. Currently, ultrasonic guided wave system for pipeline could detect defect 200 m away in ideal case while 3~6 m for storage tank floor in practical case. The complexity of the application of ultrasonic guided wave in tank floor inspection lies in the object containing multiple lap joint welds along the large diameter of the tank (up to 100 m) and the complicated reconstruction of the two-dimensional defect distribution information. The prototype of ultrasonic guided wave system for storage tank is able to detect defects

along the edge of storage tank floor. Once the propagation mechanism at overlap joint welds is broken through, the system capability is believed to be greatly improved. The main scope of the paper is to introduce the ultrasonic guided wave principles and the system design of the inspection systems for pipeline and storage tank, respectively, including the system electrical module, hardware program and the module of data acquisition, analysis and processing. Besides, the field application study cases are included to show the capability of both systems and their potential for integrity management in oil & gas storage and transportation field. INTRODUCTION Pipeline Integrity Management (PIM) is the base for safe, efficient and low-cost operation of oil & gas transportation and storage industry. Fast, reliable, lost-cost pipeline corrosion defect inspection techniques are highly desired as the support techniques for PIM. In many cases, pipelines are inaccessible to inspect while only a remote test point is reachable. Various investigations about the application of ultrasonic guided wave have been conducted in the past ten years and a few systems based on different principle-based transducers. In China, the system development of ultrasonic guided wave for pipeline survey started from 2006 and got successful in 2010. As Figure 1 shows, in our system, the ultrasonic guided wave propagates along the axial direction of the pipe. The wave is composed of torsional wave and longitudinal wave. The wave propagates along both sides of the pipe from the test point. When the wave meets the defect, part of the wave will be reflected. The reflected wave is composed of two modes one of which is the axisymmetric wave, the other is nonaxisymmetric wave. The defect recognition is the result by analyzing these two kinds of reflected waves. In practice, a

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transducer ring is mounted on the pipe. Torsional waves are excited by tone-burst signals generated from the signal generator which is integrated in our instrument. When the wave meets defects, the response wave will be received by the transducer ring. The defect information, i.e. signal amplitude, defect location, can be obtained by analyzing the axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric electrical signals which are transformed from the waves.

Figure 1. The Schematic of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection The system (shown in Figure 2) uses low frequency guided ultrasonic waves (usually 100kHz) to inspect tens of meters up to two hundred meters from a single remote location. The advantage of this system is that it can detect the defect conditions on the pipe which is inaccessible, such as road crossings or pipes underground in oil & gas transmission stations. Another advantage is that the inspection can be performed while the pipe is in service.

plate structures. Ultrasonic guided waves are suitable for its defect inspection and the technique is one of the active researches nowadays [1,2 ]. The main difficulties using ultrasonic guided wave technique for storage tank floor and wall inspection are located in the following. The attenuation of guided wave is a concern since it travels long-distance if the inspection scope is large. Another factor is the welding seam which affects the signal significantly. Also, the welding seam reflected signal will disturb the useful signal. Besides, the working condition of storage tank is another concern. For the inspection of wall, one side of the interface is oil and the other side is air. The steel-oil interface fades the guide wave signal. For the tank floor inspection, one side of the interface is oil and the other side is solid base. Both of these two sides will cause the signal loss. From the analysis above, we know that the attenuation and distortion of guided wave is severe when applying this technique for storage tank online inspection. Wave mode selection, enhancement of the excitation energy and receiving sensitivity are the compensation means. Besides, effective signal processing method is also indispensable. The experiment shows that under the condition of large frequency-thickness-product, the excitation of longitudinal wave by edge-mounted transducer is an effective inspection method [3]. In this report, we investigated the way of excitation energy enhancement by using phase array method [4], utilizing digital focusing technique for the receiving sensitivity improvement and the image reconstruction of inspected region. TRANSDUCER AND FLEXIBLE TRANSDUCER RING FOR PIPELINE INSPECTION SYSTEM We made two kinds of transducers which are based on PZT-5 and PMNT. In the testing in order to test the performance of these two kinds of transducers, each of them A and B are tested in the arrangement shown in Figure 3. The excitation signal is 10 period Hanning windows. After amplification, the peak value can reach 200V. Frequency is 120kHz. The test result for PZT-5 transducer is shown in Figure 4.

Figure2. The Schematic of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection


PC

Tek3034 Oscilloscope

Transducer

Large storage tank has unavoidable defects due to various negative factors such as exposing to natural environment and changing of liquid level inside. Specifically, the severe disaster and environment pollution caused by the corrosion punching, crack growth and break in the storage tanks due to chemical and electro-chemical corrosion in environment may bring severe property damage and risk to life. Hence, storage tank online non-destructive inspection becomes a prerequisite work. The storage tank inspection is focusing on the tank floor and wall corrosion defect inspection. Currently, robotic method based on ultrasonic testing and ultrasonic guided wave method are two quantitative online defect inspection methods. The tank floor and wall are both

HP33120A Function Generator

Ultra2020 Amplifier

Transducer

Figure 3. Test Arrangement for Transducer Performance Testing

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acquired echo signal, a 1 in. circular defect was detected 9 meters far from the test spot, as shown in Figure 7(b).

(a). Excitation Signal (b). Test Result Figure 4. Signal Wave In order to further test the performance of PMNT transducer and PZT-5 transducer, various comparisons are conducted between Plant Integrity Ltd. (PI) transducer on Teletest and PZT5 transducer, PI transducer and PMNT transducer. The excitation signal is shown in Figure 4(a). The test result between PI transducer and PZT-5 transducer is shown in Figure 5(a). And, the test result between PI transducer and PMNT transducer is shown in Figure 5(b).

(a) Transducer ring mounting on the pipe

(a) (b) (a). PI Transducer and PZT-5 Transducer (b). PI Transducer and PMNT Transducer Figure 5. Signal Wave The developed PZT-5 transducer and PMNT transducer are shown in Figure 6(a) and Figure 6(b), respectively. (b) Defect picture Figure 7. A typical field test for a buried pipe. LAYOUT OF TRANSDUCER ARRAY FOR STORAGE TANK FLOOR INSPECTION SYSTEM Due to the large area of the oil storage tank floor and wall, the ultrasonic guided wave should be transmitted with as much energy as possible to reach further. In order to enhance the transmit energy of guided waves; multiple transducers are employed to form a transducer array. Based on the phase array principle, these transducers are excited in a certain time sequence, controlling the synthesis wave front of these transducers thus satisfying the need of focusing and deflection. As shown in Figure 8, considering the parameters such as inspected range, the attenuation condition of the inspected material and defect characteristic, the transducers are grouped based on different layout and testing method selection (e.g. pulse-echo, through-transmission, etc.). This strategy implements 100% coverage of the inspected area without the loss of defect sensitivity. Also, it has considered the inspection efficiency. Figure 8 (a) shows the case that the inspection range can be covered by one transducer. In this case, the transducers are

(a). PZT-5 Transducer (b). PMNT Transducer Figure 6. Item Picture The transducer ring is designed in flexible form. The design includes power, signal transformation, ring, PC interface, communication protocol, etc. FIELD TEST OF A BURIED PIPE A series of field tests were carried out. Below is one typical test of a buried pipeline. The pipe is 8 in. in diameter and wall thickness is 6.72mm. The transducer ring was mounted on the pipe as shown in Figure 7(a). By analyzing the

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evenly distributed around the tank floor thus enhance the inspection efficiency. Figure 8 (b) shows the case that the transducer array can cover the overall inspection range by focusing multiple time along the diameter. Figure 8 (c) shows the case that one group of transducer array can only cover half of the tank floor. Two groups of these transducer arrays need be employed to realize through-transmission testing thus implementing the coverage of overall inspection range. Figure 8 (d) shows the case that the focus point moves along the chord when only part of the floor can be covered due to the large size of the inspection area. In order to 100% cover the inspection area, in this case, we have to decrease the inspection resolution and sensitivity. DIGITAL FOCUSING AND IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION The principle of digital focusing is illustrated as follow. As shown in Figure 8 (d), two group transducer arrays are placed in a certain angle. Both of these two groups can cover part of the inspection region. Each transducer can be both transmitter and receiver. Two groups of transducers are indexed as 1 and 2. The number of transducers in each group is the same. The transducers in each group are indexed as 1, 2, 3, , m according to their position. Taking consideration of target inspection range, transducer frequency and wave velocity, the propagation time t1 can be estimated. t1 is the flight time of wave from transmitting unit to the farthest target point. At the target point, diffraction waves occur. t2 is the flight time of diffraction waves from this point to the farthest receiver with regard to this point. The sampling time of all transducers can then be determined by adding up t1, t2 and a delay time. Sample rate

is determined by spatial resolution. Assume the transducer indexed as i in group k (k=1, 2) is the transmitting transducer, and the signal received by the transducer indexed as j in group l (l=1, 2) can be represented U kl (t ) by ij . We can get total number of 4mm signals if all the combinations are considered. The digital focusing is a method to enhance the wave U kl (t ) energy at target point. This method works by adding up ij with regard to different delay time parameters since the distance between transmitter, receiver and target point is different thus the phase is different. This method was the application extension of virtual synthetic focusing method that presented by YANG [5]. In the conclusion of it, they stated that this method can greatly enhance the defect signal amplitude thus effectively improve sensitivity. Assume the coordinate of a target focusing point in the detected region is (x, y), function P(x, y) which is proportional to the sound pressure at this point can be expressed as

P ( x, y ) =

U
k l i j m k i =1

kl k ij i

kl T R lj Fijklij

k0 imax

(1)

where,

(a) 100% coverage, transducers are evenly distributed around the tank floor

(b) focus point moves along the diameter.

Figure 9. Schematic of time sequence of single element emits while other elements receive.
kl U ij :

discrete sampling result of

kl U ij (t )

(c) through coverage, focus point moves along the radius

(d) partial coverage, focus point moves along the chord Figure 8. Transducer layout.

correction term of acoustic field and Ti k : geometrical characteristic of ith transmit transducer in group k

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R lj :

correction term of acoustic field and


Center Circular Hole

geometrical characteristic of jth receiving transducer in group l


Fijkl :

correction term of acoustic field and

geometrical characteristic of target focusing point


0 U ikmax :

maximum amplitude of the transmitting

Artifacts

signal by ith transducer in group k

ijkl :

correction

term

of

phase

where

ith Figure 10. The image reconstruction results.

transducer in group k transmitting, jth transducer in group l receiving For each correction term in a specific application, the effective correction function can only be determined after careful experimental analysis of the inspection acoustic field. Through Equation (1), the sound pressure at any target point in the inspection region can be obtained. The image reconstruction is implemented by distributing these sound pressures with regard to their corresponding coordinates. IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION EXPERIMENT In order to analyze the acoustic field by utilizing photoelastic system, we use K9 optical glass as specimen. Its size is 100m100mm25mm with a through hole in center. The hole is 30mm in diameter. Ultrasonic arrayed transducer is employed in this experiment. It is edge-mounted. The central frequency of the transducer is 6.5MHz. The size of array element is 2mm width. Total number of array elements is 22. In Figure 8, the travel path of the ultrasound which is generated by one element is shown. Emitting signal and receiving signal are captured at four places around the square boundary. Figure 9 listed four series of wave signals from the experiment. Each of them shows the the received signals by one-emit-all-receive mode. Abscissa represents time and ordinate represents the position of array element. From the figures, we can see that the waves have regularity. However, due to the concurrence of direct path wave, angular scatter, interface wave and other disturbance wave, the overall signals get complicated. The scattering waves of the through hole cant be recognized obviously. Figure 10 shows the image reconstruction result after utilizing Equation (1) processing the received wave signals. The image of the center hole is clear. However, there are some nonexistent fake images due to the effect of direct path waves. The appropriate selection of the correction terms also has great impact on effect of the image reconstruction. The impact of direct path waves can be eliminated by filtering while the selection of correction terms depends on systematic experimental results.

(b) Primary image aSketch of the tank floor reconstruction result specimen Figure 11. Image reconstruction of tank floor specimen Figure 11 shows an image reconstruction result of a tank floor specimen. The specimen is made of the same material with the edge board of tank floor, and the thickness is 10mm. As shown in Figure 11(a), there are 4 artificial defects in this specimen. Those are, 1 a through hole with diameter of 5mm; 2 a cutting with dimension of 30mm4mm2.5mm(2.5mm is the deepness); 3 a through hole with diameter of 10mm; 4 a through hole with diameter of 20mm; the horizontal distance of them is 100mm (1 to 2), 100mm (2 to 3), 200mm (3 to 4). The transducer array is located at a horizontal distance of 2500 mm to artificial defect 3. The image reconstructed based on Equation (1) is shown in Figure 11(b). In Figure 11(b), the horizontal positions of the artificial defects coincide well with the real positions; but the vertical shapes distort seriously. That means more suitable correction terms should be used in Equation (1), then the image reconstruction result may be better. CONCLUSIONS Ultrasonic Guided Wave technique is one of the main techniques for in-service pipeline survey. The successful development of the technique provides a strong support for PIM. On the basis of the principles, this paper also presented the design of the main modules, including the system

Copyright 2012 by ASME

electrical hardware, drivers, software for data collection, analysis and data processing. Although the technique holds significant advantages on in-service pipeline survey, it also has limitation. It is a appropriate tool for fast survey while the detection range is still unstable. The range depends on the pipeline conditions and the soil around it. The technique can provide rough quantitative information for defect size and location. It is suitable for oil & gas pipeline with large diameter range, from pipeline with diameter less than 0.5 m to pipeline with diameter larger than 1m. The trial testing to utilize the guided wave technique inspecting the coating of the pipeline was conducted. However, the result is not satisfactory. It is appropriate for inspecting the defect of the steel body of the pipe. Ultrasonic guided wave inspection technique is one of the main means for oil storage tank online corrosion defect inspection. The guided wave attenuates severely due to the characteristic of storage tank and the limit of working conditions. In this report, we discussed the method that controlling the transducer array with phased array technique to enhance the excitation energy. Viable transducer array layouts are presented according to different size of inspection area. In

order to improve the receiving sensitivity, digital focusing method is adopted and the equation for image reconstruction is presented. The experiments show that it is viable to reconstruct inspection image with this equation. It is helpful in locating the defect position and determining defect equivalent. However, when performing ultrasonic imaging with this method, the signal filtering, equation simplification and applicability in practice need be improved in future works. REFERENCES
[1] [2] X. Jun, L. Liu, Flaw Testing of Tank Floor by Ultrasonic Guided Waves, Non-destructive Testing (Chinese Journal), 01-2008. Y. Xu, F. Liu, Advanced Integrity Inspection Techniques for Large Vertical Storage Tanks, Non-destructive Testing (Chinese Journal), 082007. Greve, D. W., Zheng, P., and Oppenheim, I. J., Excitation of longitudinal and Lamb waves in plates by edge-mounted transducers, Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Conference, New York, October 2007. W. Zhu and R.L. Rose, Lamb Wave Generation and Reception with Time Delay Periodic Linear Arrays: A BEM simulation and experimental study, IEEE Trans. Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control vol. 46, pp. 654-664, 1999. Y. Yang, Y. Chen, De. Fu, A New Method of Phased-array Ultrasonic Used in NDT, Sensor World, 2003(05), pp. 5-8.

[3]

[4]

[5]

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