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A TECHNIQUE FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF PIPELINE INTERNAL

CORROSION BY THE MEASUREMENT OF CLEANING PIG VIBRATION






D A Russell and B Snodgrass
Weatherford Pipeline & Specialty Services
Unit 3, Newhailes Industrial Estate
Edinburgh, UK EH21 6SY

Dr J Lawson
ChevronTexaco Upstream Europe
Seafield House
Hill of Rubislaw
Aberdeen, UK AB15 6XL

ABSTRACT
The use of Intelligent Pigs to survey pipelines as part of pipeline integrity
management has become almost routine in the oil and gas industry. The now mature
pipeline infrastructures of the world, together with more prescriptive regulatory
regimes, is likely to lead to increasing needs of such inspections with the attendant
increase in demand for methods of economical inspection to provide corrosion data
for those lines that currently may not be accessible using conventional intelligent pigs.
A new industry sponsored study in the form of a J oint Industry Project has been
undertaken aimed at demonstrating that the presence of internal corrosion in pipelines
induces measurable and identifiable vibration in a carrier pig as it passes through the
line. The study is based on the conjecture that it is possible to characterize pig
vibrations in such a way as to differentiate between pipe that is, for example,
corroded, un-corroded or may have wax present. The project saw the design and
development of a new pig-mounted device for measuring and recording vibration. The
theory developed into a series of trials in which the pig was passed through test loops
and operational pipelines with known corrosion defects, thus allowing consideration
to be given to the effects of line diameter, pig speed and pig design in interpreting the
vibration measured. The results to date have demonstrated that it is indeed possible to
differentiate reliably between line characteristics and conditions while pigging with
water or liquid product.
Paper No.
CORROSION
2005
05136
1
Copyright
2005 by NACE International. Requests for permission to publish this manuscript in any form, in part or in whole must be in writing to NACE International,
Publications Division, 1440 South Creek Drive, Houston, Texas 77084 77084-4906. The material presented and the views expressed in this paper are solely
those of the author(s) and not necessarily endorsed by the Association. Printed in U.S.A.
In this paper the authors discuss the principles of the project, the design of the pig-
mounted vibration sensor and the constraints that the carrier pig design places on the
capabilities of this new technology. Results to date and the ongoing field trials in
operational pipelines in the North Sea are reviewed. Successful completion of these
trials will offer operators an effective alternative to IP deployment for assessing the
suitability of pipelines for continued service.

Keywords: inspection, integrity management, pipelines, intelligent pigging.

INTRODUCTION
The importance of the role that pipelines play in getting oil and gas to each of the
stages between the reservoir and point of sale cannot be overemphasised. Such
pipeline systems may be offshore or onshore; they exist pre or post separation and
also on both sides of the refining process. Pipelines are the main artery by which this
inter-process transport occurs. Whilst a limited volume of product can be transported
by tanker on both land and sea, interruption to flow because of failure in a pipeline
system or one of its components, such as a valve or flange, incurs highly significant
losses. In addition, and more importantly, the potential in terms of safety and the
environment can range from challenging to disastrous.

Pipeline integrity is therefore a key operational issue. Whether a pipeline is offshore
or onshore, it is likely that it will be buried either under the seabed or simply buried if
onshore. In either case, assessing the external condition will be inconvenient,
expensive and time consuming. Also, in either case, assessing the internal condition
will be all of these but, additionally, in many instances, virtually impossible. Clearly,
condition assessment and management are the principal means by which pipeline
system failure can be prevented, hopefully by early identification and prevention.
Access to the bore of a pipeline will enable the identification of a wide range of
information and, in many cases, will permit assessment of the external condition of
many of the parameters that have potential to threaten integrity. From an internal
condition perspective, access to the bore will provide data on:-

Wall thickness
Wall pitting due to corrosion
General corroded areas
Wax
Scale
Geometry
Weld condition
Cracks longitudinal and circumferential

It is true that many, if not all of these parameters could be determined from internal
access.

Traditionally, the most expeditious means of measurement and assessment has been
by mounting equipment on a series (or train) of pigs which are launched at one end of
a pipeline and recovered at the other. Whilst this in itself poses many challenges, the
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real trick is in analysing and interpreting the recovered data with a great amount of
emphasis being put on the skill of interpretation. Several good technologies have
already been established, including magnetic flux leakage and ultrasonic inspection
utilising a carrier pig. The exponential growth in digital storage and the ever
increasing battery life that supports digitisation of data have significantly improved
that science. Nevertheless, current technology requires a multi-module approach to
data acquisition. The adaptation of modern physics must surely have potential. There
is therefore a real need for research into and development of new methods of
identifying changes to the geometry, condition or surface contour of pipelines. The
measurement of vibrational characteristics of a pig is such an emerging technology
which, at worst, might give an indication of the occurrence of changes to the internal
surface of a pipeline.

During the course of operations with instrumented (smart) pigs it has been remarked
that the signals recorded for vibration often show anomalous readings, particularly at
relatively low frequencies (up to a few hundred Hertz). The nature of these anomalies
is typically a local increase in the recorded vibration level over distances from a few
meters up to a few hundreds of meters. Very often these anomalies remain the same
from inspection run to inspection run over a time interval of months or years. From
the earliest observations of this behavior, it has been speculated that the cause was the
interaction between the pipe-wall and the pig disks, and that the anomalously high
signals were due to some change in this interaction caused by local differences in the
internal condition of the pipe-line.

CONCEPT AND PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION
It was considered that the use of vibration data acquired from a cleaning pig as the
basis for inspecting and monitoring the condition of a pipeline would potentially
allow the operator to monitor internal pipeline wall condition as the pipeline is
being cleaned. This would be a radical departure from traditional inspection
methods. The approach being suggested here can be summarized as using:

"the dynamic response of a cleaning pig to changes in the condition
of a pipeline as a measure of that change"

Current approaches to pipeline inspection involve introducing a direct sensing device
into the pipeline. This sensing device can then be used to provide a measure of for
example, weld positions, a dent or internal corrosion. Sensors used in other sectors of
the industry, such as calipers and ultrasonic probes have been directly applied to
pipeline inspection. The developers of these tools look to the pig simply as the means
of deploying these sensors into the pipeline. This has resulted in a variety of tools
being developed ranging from the earliest electro-mechanical Caliper Pigs through to
the state-of-the-art second generation Intelligent Pigs
1,2,3
.

When considering the behavior of the carrier pig itself, the developers of these tools
have tended to look upon this as a problem potentially compromising the quality of
data from whatever sensor is being deployed. Pig behavior has not been looked upon
as a valuable source of information in its own right. The tools that have evolved are
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effectively NDT machines, generating vast quantities of data that require extensive
data processing in order to extract results. Although these devices have arguably
become reasonably accurate and reliable at detecting features, their use can sometimes
fail to be either economically and/or technically feasible.

As a result there are many lines in production in the North Sea and elsewhere where
an Intelligent Pig inspection either cannot be justified or presents insurmountable
technical difficulties. A further factor worth noting is that an inspection using an
Intelligent Pig is only a 'snap-shot' in time. This means that when a survey is carried
out and the condition established using codes such as ANSI B31G or RSTRENG,
only very approximate assessments of future condition can be made using assumed
corrosion rates
4
. This approach is subject to error, as future corrosion rates may vary
with changes in fluid properties, field conditions, pipeline shape etc. There are
presently restricted means of monitoring the internal condition continuously along the
length of a pipeline between Intelligent Pig surveys.

The method discussed here is fundamentally different to this traditional approach
5,6
.
Rather than looking to deploy a sensor that directly measures wall thickness or the
size of a dent, it instead treats the cleaning pig itself as the sensor. This idea arises as
a result of observations made during ongoing test work on standard cleaning pigs.
These observations suggest that the dynamic behavior of a cleaning pig should not
change significantly unless the environment through which it is traveling is changing.
Specifically it has been found that a pig supports a given differential pressure,
generates a certain amount of noise and vibrates in a particular way unless the
environment has changed, say, due to the presence of a dent, debris or internal
corrosion. This suggests that instrumentation could then be fitted to the pig to
monitor its dynamic behavior and look for these changes. Where these changes occur
the data could then be analyzed and the cause identified.

VIBRATION SENSOR DESIGN
Previous smart utility pigs captured data at low rates recording averaged signal
amplitudes across a (small) number of frequency bands. This process is equivalent to
recording a very crude and approximate power spectrum using only a few frequency
'buckets'.

Early prototype test work at laboratory scale suggested that significant amounts of
detail in the response of the pig motion along the pipe were being lost in this process.
A set of simple tests capturing the entire response of a pig at a sample rate of 30 KHz
was performed. This revealed that as expected there was a fairly complex interaction
between the vibration modes of the pig and the excitation caused by the pig motion
along the line.

Figure 1 illustrates the type of data that was acquired during the course of these tests.
These tests were carried out using a modified version of a then standard current smart
utility pig. In normal operation, accelerometers are used to measure the vibration. The
frequency response of these instruments had been selected to give a stable flat
response near DC. The response was known to resonate at around 1500-2000 Hz and
to tail-off rapidly above this. For these reasons a design exercise to select a suitable
accelerometer was required. Given that for this application the DC response of the
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instrument was not critical, no especial difficulty was experienced in sourcing an
accelerometer (Endevco 'Isotron') with a near-linear response from under 10Hz out to
50KHz. The region of interest was seen to lie in the excitation of higher modes of
vibration of the pig in the corroded test-spool, presumably as a consequence of the
interaction between the pig-disks and the roughened region of the pipe wall. In this
initial test it is the presence of a peak at around 250Hz that is of interest. This peak
was only observed to occur when testing with a corroded spool.

TEST LOOP DESIGN AND SPECIFICATION
General Test Loop Specification
The trials were conducted in a 10'' test facility (Figures 2, 3). The loop, which allows
continuous pigging, includes a removable 6m spool-piece intended for use in trials
such as these. The motive fluid is water driven round the loop by an electric pump.
The flow-rate is controlled by regulating the pump rotation speed using an inverter.
Flow rate can be controlled by this means between 0.1 and 1.2 m/s. The loop operates
as two separate flow-paths, divided by a pair of ball valves. Pig-signaling devices are
used to control the valves and maintain a near constant pigging velocity round the
loop.

The loop is 10" ID steel pipe, connected by flanged joints. The 90 bends are 5D in
radius. The loop is designed to permit 6m long test sections to be placed immediately
before the first of the bends.

Test Spool Preparation
For the purpose of testing the prototype corrosion detection tool, it was necessary to
define a range of test spools covering the range of conditions the tool was intended to
detect. The following list was constructed:

Uncorroded Spool (control)
Slight General Corrosion Spool (0.5 1.0 mm of metal loss across entire
internal surface)
Severe General Corrosion Spool (5 mm of metal loss across entire internal
surface)
Slight Channel Corrosion (1 mm of metal loss in a channel along the bottom
of the pipe.
Severe Channel Corrosion (5mm of metal loss in a channel along the bottom
of the pipe.

In order to achieve the specified corrosion of the test-pieces, a method for accelerating
the progress of the corrosion process was required. Five identical spools of 10"
diameter and 9.7mm WT were prepared. One was used, unaltered as the 'uncorroded'
or control spool.

Two others were propped at an angle of approximately 45 and filled with an
electrolyte. The remaining two spools were kept horizontal and partially filled with
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the electrolyte. A current was impressed through the metal resulting in a greatly
increased rate of corrosion. Figures 4 and 5 illustrate this procedure.

This method was only a partial success, with the corrosion rates being rather slower
than predicted. This, of course, was not a problem in the case of the 'Uncorroded' test
spool. The nominal specification was as indicated above, however, measurements on
this spool suggest that the actual WT was only 8.9mm.

For the 'Slight General Corrosion' test spool the metal loss achieved was at the bottom
of the specified range, approximately 0.5mm average wall loss. The corrosion is
unevenly spread with most metal loss at the bottom of the spool and furthest away
from the upstream end of the spool. Figure 6 shows a contour representation of the
loss achieved.

For the 'Severe General Corrosion' spool, initial attempts to accelerate corrosion by
the impressed current method using a length of 9.3mm WT pipe did not provide the
necessary corrosion rate. For this reason a length of 6.3mm WT was used, and this
was subsequently corroded by the impressed current method. An approximate metal
loss of 0.6mm was achieved. Overall this was equivalent to a 3.6mm metal loss
compared to the uncorroded spool. This was not particularly evenly distributed across
the spool. Figure 6 shows that the first (1.5m) of the spool has substantially less loss,
as does the left-hand side of the spool (between 12 Oclock and 6 Oclock). This is
attributed to the 45 angle that the spool was raised to leaving a significant part of the
upper internal surface of the pipe-spool dry during the process.

For the 'Slight Channel Corrosion' the acceleration of corrosion by the impressed
current and crevice method using a length of 9.3mm WT pipe was reasonably
successful. Metal loss was created varying between 0.5 and 1.0mm in a very irregular
channel varying between 20 and 80 wide. The deepest continuous channel was
around the 7:30 position in the configuration in which the spool was eventually tested.
Note that from Figure 6, this spool is rather closer to the Slight General Corrosion
Spool in metal loss than would ideally have been the case.

For the 'Severe Channel Corrosion' spool, again, initial attempts with the impressed
current and crevice method using a length of 9.3mm WT pipe did not provide the
necessary corrosion rate. For this reason the channel was fabricated by removing a
section of the pipe and then welding a section of thinner walled pipe in its place. The
channel portion of this pipe was then subsequently corroded by the impressed current
method. This produced a spool with approximately 3.4mm metal loss in a channel 60
wide centered on the 6 o'clock position. Figure 7 shows a photograph of the inside of
the spool.

Figure 6 summarizes the metal loss achieved in each of the four (corroded) test
spools. The contours are 0.1mm apart and represent the total metal loss achieved
around the pipe. Measurements were made at eight locations along each spool and at
eight positions around the pipeline (the 0130 and 1030 measurements were omitted
for the channel corrosion spools). Radial positions are based on looking from the
upstream of the test spool; distance is likewise from this end.

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THE CARRIER PIG
A standard bi-directional pig design was used, as shown in Figure 8. This pig was
made as close as possible in dimensions to a normal 10" pig. Of course, the pig itself
was non-standard in that the flanged metal body was constructed as a pressure vessel
suitable for carrying the instrumentation through the pipeline.

In order to be able to test the response of the instrumentation to variations in pig
configuration, a number of different disk sizes and pig configurations were tested.
These included under-sized and over-sized sealing disks, thinner/thicker sealing disks,
under-sized guide disks thin guide disks, and longer and shorter pig bodies. Table 1
summarizes the configurations tested.

TEST METHODOLOGY
The prototype tool collects data at two different sampling frequencies. The pressure,
temperature and positioning data are recorded at a frequency of approximately 24Hz.
The vibration sensor during these tests was sampled at approximately 31 kHz, and
digitally anti-aliased at around 12 kHz, in order to suppress spurious effects from high
frequencies. The slow (24 Hz) data was intended only to provide the same general
pipeline data as the previous generation of the tool. In particular this data was used to
track the passage of the pig through the test loop and establish the locations of the
test-section in the data.

The figures presented here are generated by performing a Discrete Fourier Transform
(DFT) on a moving time window in the vibration data across the test section. A
window of 8192 time-series values was used, each window overlapping the previous
by 7168 samples. A Hamming window was used, giving more weight to samples
close to the centre of the window. Each window represents a length of 10 cm at the
slowest speed, rising to 30cm at the fastest speed. This calculation results in a set of
frequency values at a range of times that can be used to represent the data. Once these
spectrograms had been generated, the general form of the results was used to guide
the development of tools to characterize the data from each of the test spools. The
largest differences between tests were seen to lie in the frequency range under 500
Hz. All of the spools showed significant vibration below about 75 Hz, and all had a
strong response around 350 400 Hz. For this reason, the frequency band between 75
and 300 Hz was used to characterize each test. For each pass through the test spool
the percentage of power values in the spectrogram above a certain threshold value
were calculated. This calculation was repeated for threshold values from 75dB up
120dB to create a simple 2-D plot of the response of the tool in each test section for
each lap. This also provided an objective way in which to assess the repeatability of
the tests. For most of the tests each lap has a relatively tight group of results for a
given speed and threshold values.

Table 2 lists the tests performed. Each test was repeated ten times at each of three
speeds (0.4, 0.8 and 1.2 m/s)

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TEST RESULTS
General Comments
Figure 9 shows spectrograms for a sample loop from Test 1. These are false color
images of the frequency spectra described above. These values are in dB
(20log10(Spectral Power)). The uppermost image shows the response for the entire
lap across the entire frequency range. The test spool is at the far left hand side, ending
at around 7 seconds into the loop. Clear events on this scale include the responses at
the bends, where there is very little higher frequency vibration (7-15 seconds and 33
42 seconds). In both cases the response through the valve can be differentiated in the
middle of the bend. The regions with very little response at all at 18 and 45 seconds
are the locations where the valves change over and the pig momentarily loses drive
pressure. A set of clear harmonic responses is visible in the straight sections of pipe,
with some sections having more harmonics visible than others. The corroded test
section has rather broader lines, and a wide response, in some locations out to around
5 kHz.

Below this is an image showing only the low frequency response (under 500 Hz),
again for the whole loop. Here the clearest feature is a strong peak at between 350 and
400 Hz, present in all of the straight sections of pipe. This represents the whistling
noise made by the pig as it goes round the loop, and the frequency is believed to be
more characteristic of the test-loop than the pig. It is also this resonance that generates
the harmonics visible. The presence of a wide band response in the test-spool that is
not present elsewhere is very clear in this figure, extending out to relatively high
frequencies.

Finally the last image shows the whole frequency response for the test-spool only.
Again the pattern of resonances out to about 1200 Hz can be seen, together with the
broad response. The responses right out to 5 kHz that can be seen near the beginning
and end of the plot are the pig disks hitting the flanges at either end of the test-spool.

Figures 10, 11 and 12 show a comparison of the detailed responses for three
repetitions of the test in the "Severe General Corrosion" and "Uncorroded" test spools.
These represent the Medium, Slow and Fast speeds respectively (0.8, 0.4 and 1.2 m/s
approximately). All of these are to the same scale.

Clear in all three of these plots is a region of approximately a quarter of the length of
the spool at the start that has relatively little vibration. Examination of the test-spool
has shown that this is related to the relative levels of corrosion in the pipe, due to the
way in which the corrosion was generated. It is in fact the case that approximately the
first 1.5m of the spool has only relatively light corrosion.

Generally, the faster the pig was traveling the higher the vibration levels. On the other
hand, the responses for the 'Uncorroded' spool show no significant signal in this case
at any velocity.

Based on these results, it was decided that a statistical analysis of the frequency
region on these plots between 75 and 300 Hz was the best way to characterize the pig
response in a relatively simple way. The lower frequency was chosen to exclude the
50 Hz response which is sometimes present in the uncorroded spool, and the upper
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frequency to avoid the large peak usually present in all tests between 350 and 400 Hz.
The technique used was to estimate the area on the spectrogram that lies above a
given amplitude level.

Overall the outcome of the tests was encouraging. The "Severe General Corrosion"
spool has the highest response for almost all of the pig configurations and speeds. The
exceptions are related to the use of pig that are 'marginal' in their ability to navigate
the loop, where quite severe broad spectrum vibration could be experienced
independent of the current test spool. All of the pig configurations show quite
significant dependence on the pigging velocity, suggesting that knowledge of the
velocity of the pig may play an important part in using this new technology in the
field. There are also fairly significant differences in the response between the various
pig configurations. It is clear, for example, that the seal diameter has a major effect on
the vibration response of the pig. The outcome of the loop tests suggests that the
smaller the seal oversize, the larger the difference in response between corroded and
uncorroded test spools.

Tests were performed in the "severe general", "sever channel" and "uncorroded"
spools with a variety of pig configurations. A total of 10 configurations were used, as
listed in the test matrix (Table 1), but of these, the configuration with thin seals was
unable to get successfully transit the bends in test loop, and these tests were omitted
from the program.

Figures 13, 14 and 15 show a comparison of the responses for the "severe general
corrosion" and "uncorroded" spools for each of the pig configurations at each of the
three velocities tested.

For the corroded spool at the medium and fast velocities the lines are grouped
together quite tightly, indicating relatively little dependence on the pig configuration.
This is particularly the case for the fast velocity. The only exceptions to this are the
pig with the large spacer diameter, and the heavy pig, both of which show less
response.

At slower speeds, the range or responses is much wider, although the large spacer pig
still had the lowest response. Overall the pig with the small diameter seals gives the
highest response.

The control spool shows the opposite behavior to the corroded spools, with the
responses being tightly grouped at the lowest velocity, becoming widely spread at the
highest. This is particularly true for the large seal pig, where the response is highly
dependent on the speed, being greater than that found in the Severe General corrosion
spool at the highest velocity.

Work on the data with commercially available pattern-recognition software suggests
that the use of a zero-crossing related method
7
can distinguish between the 'severely',
'slightly' and 'uncorroded' spool with approximately 97% accuracy for a given
velocity. The method used is to divide the data into a number of 'epochs' based on
where the signal crosses zero. Each epoch is then given a code dependent upon its
length (number of samples) and its complexity (number of extrema). The frequency
with which pairs of codes occur constitutes a 'fingerprint' for the line condition. In
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principle this fingerprint is independent of the pig velocity, and in fact not taking
account of speed only reduces the accuracy achieved in recognizing spools by
approximately 5%. Figure 16 shows fingerprints for three of the test spools.

FIELD TRIALS
Following the successful completion of the (first phase) of test-loop trials, a number
of pipelines were identified as potential locations for field trials. The criteria
employed were principally that recent intelligent pig data should be available to the
project, and that as far as possible the pipeline conditions should reflect 'typical'
values in at least some aspects.

The first field trials were performed in a 16" offshore oil export line. This line
produces a relatively low rate, equivalent to a pigging speed of only 0.15 0.20 m/s.
(The line fluid is crude oil).

This line was considered especially suitable for field trials, since it was known to have
experienced very severe corrosion problems in the past, and a substantial part of the
line had recently been replaced. The expectation was that the replacement line laid at
this time would still be in a non-corroded state, while the ends of the line, which were
still the original pipe, were known to have many thousands of defects from an IP
survey performed immediately prior to the pipeline repair. This section covered
approximately the first and last 5km of the pipeline.

Unfortunately the prototype nature of the tool leads to certain limitations in the field
situation. In particular, the test unit has power for only 27 hours of operation. The
slow pigging speed (0.17 m/s) achievable in this line, in combination with the
relatively short endurance available, meant that only the first 16km or so of the line
could be inspected. This was considered acceptable as giving a satisfactory length of
both the old and new pipe-work.

This field trial was performed in 2003, and data was successfully gathered using
essentially the same electronics platform as had been used in the loop-tests. Figure 17
shows a comparison between a spectrogram of a section of the new line and a section
of the original line.

The section of the pipeline that was surveyed was divided into pipe-joints, using the
(very noticeable) indications of weld location in the vibration record. Each pipe-joint
was characterized as uncorroded, slightly corroded or severely corroded using the
vibration data. This classification was intended to correspond to the three corrosion
classes in the loop test in terms of instrument response. It is clear that this type of
classification cannot provide a quantitative measure of metal loss, and the implication
is not that the test-loop and field-trial classifications are similar in value.

For the pipeline under consideration, of course, almost all of the line could be
considered to fall into either the 'no corrosion' or the 'severe corrosion' classification
and this was reflected in the vibration data. Work has continued on more
representative field trials, and results from these will be used to determine whether the
technique is capable of discriminating between more subtle differences in internal
pipeline condition. Some initial work with pattern recognition techniques suggests
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that the presence of moderate quantities of loose debris in the pipeline can be
distinguished from corrosion by differences in the vibration characteristics, although,
of course, where large amounts are involved, these may disguise the underlying
condition.
CONCLUSIONS
Pig vibration has been shown to be characteristic of pig disk-pipe wall interactions, at
least in part. The effects of other parameters, such as pig speed, size and weight have
also been considered. The effect of disk size has been shown to be of second order,
but velocity effects can be significant, particularly in the amplitude of the effect. No
consideration has been given directly at this stage to effects of fluid properties.

This behavior is in line with theoretical studies of pig vibration modes
8
. This
modeling work suggests that a number of bands of resonant frequencies exist. For
these test, the lowest two bands seem to be of relevance. The lower is centered in the
tens of hertz, and the second at around 150 to 200 Hz. The precise detail of disk
oversize, stiffness etc has been shown to have a relatively small effect on these
resonances. The field trial (16") and loop-trials (10") confirm these approximate
frequency bands, and suggest that dependence on line diameter is also slow.

The effects of velocity seem largely to be on amplitude rather than the frequency. For
this reason the indications are that a suitable pattern recognition technique will be able
to distinguish these effects from genuine pipeline condition changes.

The test data from both sets of tests supports the idea that the increased surface
roughness of the corroded pipe wall provides much more energy to the pig vibration,
increasing the amount of the higher order vibration present in the frequency spectrum.

Indications from the field trials are that the effects of fluid properties mean that it is
probably not the case that a single fingerprint for corroded line vibration will emerge
that is valid in all situations. Rather each pipeline will probably require its own
baseline, against which changes may be monitored.

REFERENCES
1. J . Cordell, H Vanzant, All About Pigging, On-stream Systems Ltd, UK, 1999
2. A. Crouch, R. Anglisan, M. J aarah, Quantitative Field Evaluation of Magnetic
Flux Leakage and Ultrasonic In-line Inspection, Pipes and Pipelines International,
1996
3. H. Willems, O.A. Barbian, Crack detection in Pipelines by Advanced Intelligent
Pigging, Pipeline Technology , Elsevier Science, Volume 1 pp 223 234, 1995
4. W.O. Oluoch, I. Skinner, Rehabilitation of the 450km Mombassa to Nairobi
Refined Products Pipeline, Pipeline Rehabilitation and Maintenance Conference,
Prague, 2000
5. G. Short, M. Fletcher, The Role of Smart Cleaning Pigs in Pipeline Rehabilitation
and Repair, Pipeline Rehabilitation and Maintenance Conference, Prague, 2000
6. D. Russell, B. Snodgrass, G.H. Smith, The Smart Acquisition and Analysis
Module for Pipeline Inspection, ISOPE 2000, Seattle, 2000
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7. T.G. Clarkson, etal, Speaker identification for security systems using
reinforcement-trained pRAM neural network architecture., IEEE Transactions on
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Feb 2001
8. G.H. Smith, Vibration Model of a Pipeline Pig, unpublished, 2002

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of BP, ChevronTexaco, Kerr-
McGee, Marathon Oil, Petro-Canada, Shell U.K. Limited, Talisman and Total E&P
UK plc during the course of this work.
12



Figure 1 - Early Prototype Vibration Response


Figure 2 - Test Loop Schematic
13


Figure 3 - Test Loop

















Figure 4 - Corrosion Acceleration Apparatus
Figure 5 - Accelerated Corrosion







14
Figure 6 - Corrosion Pattern in Test Spools


Figure 7 - Artificial Channel Corrosion













15



Figure 8 - Test Vehicle





16

Figure 9 - Spectrograms of Sample Loop
17

Figure 10 - Corroded vs. Uncorroded Response at 0.4m/s

Figure 11 - Corroded vs. Uncorroded Response at 0.8m/s

18

Figure 12 - Corroded vs Uncorroded Response at 1.2m/s




Figure 13 - Effect of Pig Configuration at 1.2m/s
19


Figure 14 - Effect of Pig Configuration at 0.8m/s


Figure 15 - Effect of Pig Configuration at 0.4m/s
20

Figure 16 - Zero-crossing Method Coded Signals


Figure 17 - 'New' Pipeline vs. ''Old' Pipeline Response
21
Table 1 - Pig Configurations for Testing
ID Variable

Comments Test values
A Seal diameter Relative to line size Standard, large,
small
B Seal thickness This will effect the bending stiffness Standard, large,
small
C Distance between
seals
Tested with variable K Standard, large,
small
D Guide diameter Relative to line size Standard, small
E Guide thickness This will effect the bending stiffness Standard, small
F Distance between
guides
Tested with variable E Standard, small
G Spacer diameter This will effect the bending of the discs Standard, large
H Weight Standard, heavy
Table 2 - Test Matrix
Test No. Spool Pig
1 General Severe Standard
2 Uncorroded Standard
3 General Slight Standard
4 Channel Severe Standard
5 Channel Slight Standard
6 General Severe Small Seal
7 General Severe Large Seal
8 General Severe Thin Seal
9 General Severe Thick Seal
10 General Severe Small Guide
11 General Severe Thin Guide
12 General Severe Long
13 General Severe Large Spacer
14 General Severe Heavy
15 General Severe N/A
16 General Severe N/A
17 General Severe N/A
18 Channel Severe Small Seal
19 Channel Severe Large Seal
20 Channel Severe Thin Seal
21 Channel Severe Thick Seal
22 Channel Severe Small Guide
23 Channel Severe Thin Guide
24 Channel Severe Long
25 Channel Severe Large Spacer
26 Channel Severe Heavy
27 Uncorroded Small Seal
28 Uncorroded Large Seal
29 Uncorroded Thin Seal
30 Uncorroded Thick Seal
31 Uncorroded Small Guide
32 Uncorroded Thin Guide
33 Uncorroded Long
34 Uncorroded Large Spacer
35 Uncorroded Heavy

22

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