Materials in pipelines are subjected to a series of stress and corrosive environments. These conditions eventually lead to stress corrosion cracking (SCC). Several NDT techniques already exist to detect and assess such cracks in the field, some being more efficient than others at providing accurate depth measurements. Depth measurements are essential to help decide between a low-cost repair and an expensive section replacement, but any new NDT method first needs to be evaluated in the lab before its gets deployed in the field. Validating that the method provides trustworthy results can hardly be done without a reliable ground truth. A new low cost X-Ray imaging method, involving scatter corrections and the physical aspects of SCC, was developed to generate high resolution 3D SCC depth maps of pipeline samples showing precise crack positions and depth measurements. This method could be used as a gold standard for evaluating traditional NDT techniques, such as ultrasound or eddy current, since digital X-Ray imagery in a controlled laboratory environment can yield better resolution. We will discuss the challenges of making such measurements and the techniques used to overcome them using state of the art hardware and software.

DOI: 10.32548/RS.2019.002

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