March 2010 Vol. 237 No. 3

Web Exclusive

TechCorr LRGUT Single-Point Pipe Inspection

TechCorr’s Long Range Guided Wave Ultrasonic Technique (LRGUT) was designed to inspect 100 percent of a pipe segment from one single location.

The company says that it works by inducing torsional or longitudinal guided waves into the pipe body, where they are propagated along the pipe segment being inspected. When these guided waves identify an anomaly or pipe feature, they mode convert into laminar waves and reflect back to the tools original location. The signals are digitally captured on a laptop. The time-of-flight for each signature is calculated to determine its distance from the tool. The cross-sectional area is calculated by amplitude and then the circumferential extent determined by the focused beams (broken down in octants) to determine the significance of the defect.

TechCorr says that the LRGUT technology is primarily applied to inspect difficult-to-access piping systems such as:

• Insulated pipe in refineries
• Offshore pipeline risers
• Cased road or railway crossings
• Loading lines and associated pipe work
• Tank dyke pipeline crossings
• Above ground or buried flow lines
• River or bridge pipeline crossings
• As part of ECDA & ICDA methodologies

For more information, see www.techcorr.com.