OPCOM

The 'Development of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection Technology for the Condition Monitoring of Offshore Structures (OPCOM) project will develop revolutionary technology to continuously monitor the integrity of structures such as offshore oil production platforms and offshore wind turbine towers using Ultrasonic Guided Wave (UGW) Technology.

The proposal answers the call for ‘New life-cycle optimised, safety and environmental technologies for installed production'. The majority of the offshore oil and gas platforms are at the end of their life cycles (between 25-40 years old). Both are in urgent need of inspection. The development of UGW Technology for inspecting offshore structures has the potential impact upon life cycle cost of vital components of the infrastructure through:

• Continuous monitoring of structural integrity from fabrication to scrapping.
• Extending the life of offshore structures, therefore reducing depletion of resources for new builds

Current methods of inspection of offshore oil and gas platforms and wind turbine towers have the following major drawbacks:

• They can only inspect a few cm2 area.
• They need to be deployed by divers in hazardous sea conditions.
• They need expensive Remotely Operated Vehicles for deployment
• They cannot inspect the base of the wind turbine towers and offshore platform structures where large loads from sea currents cause fatigue cracks

The above lack of inspection technology has led to major disasters and loss of life after large oil platforms have structurally failed. A number of growing examples include Alexander L> Kielland, which failed through undetected cracking killing 123 oil and gas workers. Total commercial loss was €500m. Unfortunately the lack of adequate inspection techniques means that this is becoming an ever-common occurrence. This project will develop new techniques to detect cracks and corrosion in offshore structures.

For its part, KCC will design, develop, test and deploy the man-machine-interfaces and provide on-going software development skills.