PR-335-203810-R03 CT Fundamentals with Calibration and Reference Standards for Pipeline Anomaly Detection

X-ray Computed Tomography (XRCT) was initially developed and utilized in the medical industry to image the internal structure of the human body. X-ray imaging was conceived and realized at the turn of the 20th century and subsequently, XRCT, was conceived in the middle of the 20th century and its development continues today. Near the end of the 20th century industrial cone beam XRCT for applications such as dimensional metrology branched off, including its use for identifying and dimensioning flaws.

XRCT has been utilized successfully for three-dimensional imaging of flaws in the small panel cut-outs from steel oil and gas transmission pipelines. However, the performance of XRCT on full-circumference pipe samples has not been assessed to determine if the technology can be used to obtain flaw dimensional information with the same accuracy that has been observed on panel cut-outs. This would enable the industry to generate full-circumference reference samples with well-characterize flaw dimensions, which would be much more practical and useful for qualification, certification, and validation of inline inspection and nondestructive examination tools, personnel, and procedures.

This tasks for this project were to evaluate the state-of-the-art in XRCT technology, establish guidelines for XRCT scanning of pipeline samples, compare XRCT performance on artificial and natural flaws, and compare performance of lab-based and in-the-ditch XRCT technologies on artificial and natural flaws through scanning multiple samples utilizing multiple XRCT vendors and subsequently destructive testing the samples. The overall objective of the project was to determine if XRCT is a viable alternative to destructive testing for collecting “truth” data from flaw reference samples.

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