Inspection of Liner Wall Thinning and Interface Debonding in Bimetallic Lined Pipes Using Pulsed Eddy Current Testing

Abstract

Bimetallic lined pipe (BLP) has been increasingly used in offshore and subsea oil and gas structures, but how to identify the invisible inner defects such as liner wall thinning and interface debonding is a challenge for future development. A nondestructive testing (NDT) method based on pulsed eddy current testing (PECT) has been proposed to face these difficulties. The inspection of the BLP specimen (AISI1020 base tube and SS304 liner) is implemented from outside of the pipe by using a transmitter–receiver-type PECT probe consisting of two induction coils. By simplifying the BLP specimen to stratified conductive plates, the electromagnetic field interaction between the PECT probe and specimen is analytically modeled, and the probe inspection signals due to liner wall thinning and interface debonding are calculated. In order to highlight the weak response (in microvolts) from the liner, the inspection signals are subtracted by the signal, which is calculated in the case of only having a base tube, yielding differential PECT signals. The peak voltage of the differential signal is selected to characterize the liner wall thinning and interface debonding due to its distinguishable and linear variation. Experiment verification is also carried out on a double-walled specimen simulated by a combination of a Q235 casing pipe and SS304 tubes of different sizes. The experimental results basically agree with the analytical predictions. The peak value of the PECT signal has an ascending and descending variation with the increase in the remaining liner wall thickness and debonding gap, respectively, while the negative peak value shows opposite changes. The peak value exhibits a larger sensitivity than the negative peak value. The proposed method shows potential promise in practical applications for the evaluation of the inner defects in BLP lines.