Robotic digital X-ray scanning system for deep water flexible riser inspection (RobotX)

“随着生产设施进入深水区，近海石油和天然气运营商面临着新的挑战，如何为其资产提供足够的完整性保证。更具腐蚀性的环境、更高的压力和更高的温度会产生具有挑战性的条件。在深水和恶劣的环境中，负荷高且复杂，设计方法往往被推到当前行业能力和经验的极限，鉴于几起操作事件(如墨西哥湾的深水地平线事故)，立管系统比以往任何时候都受到越来越多的关注。这些事故导致运营商和监管机构质疑并更新了业务守则。柔性立管本质上是设计复杂的，有许多不同的材料类型，相应地在检查和完整性评估方面也面临着挑战。目前市场上可用的检测技术只包括不定期的潜水员或遥控潜水器(ROV)检查，并且只能检查近侧的层是否有电线中断，而远侧的层没有被检查。RobotX项目将调查机器人数字X射线扫描系统的可行性，该系统将解决深水柔性立管检查的需求和挑战。机器人和数字放射成像设备必须经受住恶劣的环境条件，即高压(100bar)。该系统将在爬行和处理数据时执行透视快速扫描，使用创新的图像处理方法并使用机器学习对数据进行分类。如果检测到缺陷，机器人系统将能够绕过立管并执行更彻底的扫描。使用从多个角度拍摄的图像，可以正确识别缺陷。这些创新将不仅允许检测和定位缺陷，而且还可以根据现有的历史数据库对它们进行分类，并自动决定进行定制扫描，以评估未来干预的严重性和需求。“

"New challenges are present for offshore oil and gas operators to provide adequate integrity assurance of their assets as the production facilities are reaching for the deep-water areas. Challenging conditions arise from more corrosive environments, higher pressures and temperatures. In deep water and hostile environments, where loading is high and complex and often design methods are pushed to the limit of current industry capability and experience, the riser systems have received an increased focus, more than ever in the light of several operational incidents (like the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico). These accidents have caused operators and regulators to question and update codes of practice. Flexible risers pipes are by nature complicated in design with many varying material types, corresponding to challenges in the inspection and integrity evaluation. The inspection techniques currently available in the market consist of only irregular diver or Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) inspections and are able to inspect only the near side layers for wire disruptions, with the far side layers remaining uninspected.The RobotX project will investigate the feasibility of a robotic digital x-ray scanning system that will address the needs and challenges of deep water flexible risers inspection. The robot and digital radiography equipment would have to withstand harsh environmental conditions i.e. high pressure (100bar). The system will perform a see--through quick scan as it crawls and process the data using innovative image processing methods and categorise them using machine learning. If defects are detected the robotic system will be able to turn around the riser and perform a more thorough scan. The defect will be correctly identified, using images taken at several angles. These innovations will allow not just to detect and locate the defects, but also classify them according to an existing historical database and automatically decide on bespoke scans for assessing the severity and needs for future intervention."