Abstract
Oil downhole metal pipe wall thickness measurement is of great importance for pipe evaluation and maintenance. Regular pipe inspection can be used to prevent pipe failure, which could otherwise lead to major failure and financial loss. In this paper, a low-frequency remote field eddy current (RFEC) based internal testing approach is presented, and the analytical solutions of the RFEC electromagnetic equation are obtained based on Dodd and Cheng’s method. Meanwhile, induced voltage under different low frequencies is analyzed, and proper frequencies are chosen for follow-up calculations. For reducing the inspection time of pipe thickness measurement, quasi-Newton’s method (QNM) is implemented based on the deduced solutions. Experimental results indicate that the RFEC and QNM based method is feasible for metal pipe thickness measurement. Pipe thickness is obtained accurately, and the lift-off effect, which has a considerable influence on eddy current testing results, is effectively overcome. The proposed method achieves pipe thickness measurement with proper accuracy and reduction in inspection time.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by National Science Foundation of China under the Grant numbered 61201131, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under the Grant numbered ZYGX2016J104. And the authors would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their precious advices.
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Sun, H., Shi, Y., Zhang, W. et al. RFEC Based Oil Downhole Metal Pipe Thickness Measurement. J Nondestruct Eval 40, 35 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-021-00766-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-021-00766-w