Advanced elbow scanner added to rental fleet
28/08/2019
Ashtead Technology has added the Olympus FlexoFORM™ pipe elbow scanner to its rental fleet of non-destructive testing equipment.“This is part of a major investment in our NDT fleet,” said Steve Drake, NDT Market Manager at Ashtead. “The FlexoFORM is an extremely important addition because it complements our other pipe inspection equipment and provides a solution for many particularly challenging applications.
“Pipe elbows are susceptible to damage from issues such as flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC), but they can be difficult to inspect because their shape changes from convex to concave and, of course, pipe diameters vary widely.”
To address these challenges, FlexoFORM integrates flexible phased array probe technology in a scanner. When combined with a water column, this solution can be used to collect easy-to-interpret data on elbows ranging from 4.5" outside diameter upwards. The instrument also provides 100% elbow coverage, intuitive 2D C-scan imaging, high-resolution data (1 mm × 1 mm) and fast elbow wall thickness measurement.
The scanner can be used with an OmniScan® MX2 or SX instrument to measure remaining wall thickness and detect corrosion pitting and mid-wall laminations or inclusions. High-density data, combined with the multiple views available on the flaw detector or OmniPC™ software, provide clear images of the elbow’s condition and make data interpretation faster and easier.
For pipes that are smaller than 4.5" in diameter, the FlexoFORM can be rented with the small-diameter wedge series, which allows users to manually scan the curves or elbows of pipes ranging from 1.3" to 4" outside diameter, and can be fitted with a Mini-Wheel™ encoder to create an encoded one-line scan.
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