Development of Ultrasonic Continuous Thickness Measurement Equipment for Piping

In petrochemical plants, many pipelines exist under various operating conditions, and some of them are too aged. Recently the aging of piping has caused serious accidents in many plants. Therefore, it is important to manage the lifetime of a piping system. Many of these accidents have been generated because of the failure to notice localized metal decrease in pipe-thickness caused by corrosion and/or erosion. Such oversight should be found in both the inspection planning stage and the measuring stage. The authors have developed a continuous thickness measurement system utilizing ultrasonic waves which scans metal loss in piping, including elbows, and reports the piping thickness distribution. In this report, the system performance and application are briefly shown.