Sonomatic RAIS operate in the UK managing COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards Regs 2015) sites as NDT term contract holders for clients including Shell UK, Exxon Mobil, px Group and PetroINEOS. In addition to managing term contracts, RAIS provide Inspection services in areas such in-service and newly fabricated equipment all serviced from our two state of the art UK based NDT facilities. Our Team of mobile NDT Technicians support our clients, in the field, all over the UK, on and offshore.
Among the challenges we set ourselves to overcome was the continual need for confined space entry and working, currently to inspect a sphere for example, it takes multiple technicians working inside the sphere for approx. 30 days, working above height and each other!, wearing a full ppe including RPE, double hearing protection and dust paper suits. Technicians can spend multiple days wire brushing the welds in preparation for the inspection. Part of the Inspection itself involved MPI (Magnetic Particle Penetration) which uses highly flammable spray cans, increasing the risk to everyone’s health and well-being who were working inside.
The process is painstaking, heavy lifts are involved making it overall an extremely hazardous situation for anyone to work in and is very costly in time, money and the damage to the environment.
Our solution eliminates the need of man entry to the confined space and working at height or under suspended load. It has no significant impact to the environment and is much more cost effective when compared to the previous inspection methodology.
Sonomatic RAIS Team designed and built a 3D printed model of the system which would become SPHERA – the crawler today has onboard our:
- High-Definition Video and Lighting Systems – This allows our pilots to accurately view and size defects, all footage is recorded and sent to the inspector for analysis and acceptance at the end of a shift (sooner if live streaming is acceptable)
- Patented Laser Cleaning system – this gave us the ability to clean the welds as the crawler moved around the vessel.
- Phased Array and Time of Flight Diffraction (ToFD) – detects surface and sub-surface defects, including Traverse Cracking.
- 16 Element ACFM – capable of scanning up to 90mm in a single scan, scans for surface breaking defects.
- 3D Laser Profiler – provides detailed images showing height, depth and width of any defect initially identified by ACFM or Phased Array Inspections.
SPHERA has an umbilical support that must be secured when the crawler is inside the sphere, by working with an engineering support company Sonomatic RAIS Rope Access Team were successful in developing our patented (submitted) umbilical support system called the HALO, the HALO provides support not only to the umbilical system but can be used along with our inspection system.
SPHERA offers 100% coverage cleaning and inspection with minimal risk to the operators and the environment and significantly reduced client downtime and costs.
Please click the link below to see SPHERA and our unique patented laser in action:
