Ultrasonic Inspection and Mapping of Internal Glass Coating
in Reservoirs and Reactors

A great number of pipes, reactors and reservoirs are in use in chemical industry worldwide for processing, storing and transportation of different aggressive materials. The metallic wall is protected with internal glass coating in many objects. To ensure the safety of aging equipment the glass coating must be inspected periodically.

A new technique was created to implement ultrasonic inspection of glass coating while scanning from outside with true to scale mapping of testing integrity and defects. The three-color map obtained in real time while scanning above metal surface. Map shows actually inspected non damaged area ("no defect" color) and defects, which are classified in real time automatically in two categories:

pitting in the glass without penetration into the metal (imaged with "defect color")
pitting in the glass with penetration into the metal (imaged with "critical defect color").

Described technique realized as GLASSMAP software application for the rugged portable battery operated computer based ISONIC workstation and uses standard set of ISONIC accessories for mechanics free monitoring of ultrasonic probe coordinates and acoustic coupling. The appropriate ultrasonic probe must be used to implement glass coating inspection, for example DA 312 or MSEB 5 (Krautkramer). Inspection results can be saved on disk and then plotted as glass coating map. Post processing featured also with automatic measurements of defect coordinates, sizing defects and creating comprehensive defects list.

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