How to accurately size corrosion under pipe support (CUPS) - NACE Technical Talk - 26 Mar 2021

A NACE organised virtual technical session on "How to accurately size corrosion under pipe support (CUPS)" presented by Dr Chua Chien An, who is the Regional Head of Marketing and Technical for GUL.
Abstract:
Corrosion under pipe supports (CUPS) is part of the billion-dollar problem that the oil, gas and chemical sector face in their steel pipes. Fortunately, detection of CUPS is relatively easy because it is an external corrosion defect, which can generally be detected by visual inspection. What asset managers really need is to size the corrosion, and most importantly, to know the minimum remaining wall thickness at the corroded pipe sections. However, the main challenge is the lack of direct accessibility to the corroded section due to the physical obstruction by the support. Guided wave and ultrasonic scanners can be used for CUPS inspection, since it can indirectly inspect the pipe section at the support. The accuracy of the sizing results, however, depend on the wave parameters and signal processing method chosen by the technique. A conventional amplitude-based signal processing approach typically has too high of a measurement uncertainty to reliably size corrosion. This is because wave amplitude is affected by the corrosion shape and energy losses to coatings and support pads. In this talk, we explore how GUL Scanning works and how it can overcome the challenges from a conventional CUPS inspection system in order to size corrosion accurately.
Biography:
Chien An is currently the Regional Head of Marketing for Guided Ultrasonics Limited (GUL) for the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. He has more than 5 years of experience in guided wave technology, and holds both a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London.