Toward practical 3D radiography of pipeline girth welds
- Applus RTD Chief Scientist, Rivium 1e straat 80, 2909 LE Capelle a/d IJssel (Netherlands)
Digital radiography has made its way into in-the-field girth weld testing. With recent generations of detectors and x-ray tubes it is possible to reach the image quality desired in standards as well as the speed of inspection desired to be competitive with film radiography and automated ultrasonic testing. This paper will show the application of these technologies in the RTD Rayscan system. The method for achieving an image quality that complies with or even exceeds prevailing industrial standards will be presented, as well as the application on pipeline girth welds with CRA layers. A next step in development will be to also achieve a measurement of weld flaw height to allow for performing an Engineering Critical Assessment on the weld. This will allow for similar acceptance limits as currently used with Automated Ultrasonic Testing of pipeline girth welds. Although a sufficient sizing accuracy was already demonstrated and qualified in the TomoCAR system, testing in some applications is restricted to time limits. The paper will present some experiments that were performed to achieve flaw height approximation within these time limits.
- OSTI ID:
- 22391251
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 1650; ISSN APCPCS; ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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