Research on an Automated Process to Automatically Correlate ILI Features With NDT Laser Scans

Abstract

New Century Software has completed a research and development project in collaboration with TC Energy to automatically correlate ILI corrosion features with corresponding NDT laser scan data to validate ILI depth predictions with raw laser scan pit measurements and generate unity plots. The research project utilized a process that New Century developed that automatically compares ILI features with NDT 3D laser scan measurements to generate unity plots. This process automatically reads the ILI pipe tally reports and generates GIS graphics representing the pipe surface using actual pipe length and diameter dimensions. The process automatically reads raw laser scan data and overlays this data on the GIS pipe surface. The program automates an optimization algorithm that seeks to align the ILI features with the laser data to account for measurement differences between the ILI tool and the laser scan report. Each ILI feature is aligned and used to calculate the measured maximum depth. The ILI predicted depths and the laser measured depths are represented by a unity plot that illustrates the correlation of ILI-predicted features with 3D laser scan measured features. The goal of this project was to identify the best technical approach to automatically match these data and to provide recommendations to TC Energy through testing the technique on a large amount of data and fine-tuning the configuration settings in the algorithm. Also, quantitative approaches were developed and implemented to evaluate the automatically-generated unity plots. Automating this process will save significant time and cost over manual correlation methods and provide pipeline operators with information about the quality of ILI inspections from different vendors. It could also be used to create a bias factor for ILI Corrosion Growth Rate assessment as well as inform the pipeline risk assessment model.