Flexible pipe tensile armor monitoring using eddy current technique
Paulo Apicelo de Souza Pereira, Theodoro Antoun Netto
Abstract
Flexible risers are composite cylindrical structures, which are widely used in offshore oil and gas production facilities. Failure of a flexible riser during operation causes major economic and environmental losses. The improvement of structural integrity programs based on nondestructive techniques and risk-based inspections is therefore utterly important. In this article, the feasibility of using the eddy current technique to identify wire rupture of a riser tensile armor is studied. As an important part of the work, an innovative coil prototype (probe) is developed based on the eddy current technique. To assist the construction of the prototype, numerical simulations using the Finite Element Method are applied to reproduce the physical nondestructive test (NDT) and the results are used as support for determining the parameters of the inspection circuit. The resulting signal in all analyses proved the efficacy and viability of Eddy Current Test to inspect the tensile armors of flexible pipes with eventual ruptures.