Installation of the QAE NDI system and inspection are done during operation. Report regarding the condition of the line is completed prior to an outage.

Installation is done by rope access and welding of the waveguides, by stud welding gun. All procedures are safe, approved and meet utility safety requirements.

6”x6” pieces of insulation are removed and reinsulated after the waveguides are welded. This is a one time operation.  The cost of hardware, installation and baseline inspection combined, are about one third of the inspection cost of the entire line by traditional NDE.

Once the system is permanently installed, the cost of repetitive inspection of the entire line is less than 10% of the NDE cost.

The entire length, circumference, ID, OD and the volume of the metal.

Creep, fatigue, local plastic deformation, individual micro cracks around pores and inclusions, overstressed zones in the line and others.

Assessment of hangers and support performance and uniformity of stress distribution throughout the line.

Baseline of the line integrity, which includes flaw location and their danger level, expressed in fracture mechanics terms, is created in the first inspection.

TOFD, FATS and metallography have been used in various occasions to confirm findings of the QAE NDI. There was a good agreement between the methods. Positive results by UT that were negative by QAE NDI turned out to be due to non-developing welding defects (confirmed by metallograpy ). A full comparative study was supported by EPRI. References and results are available.

Findings in various occasions were confirmed by hanger engineer and repairs were made.

The QAE NDI is more sensitive than the local NDE methods. It has an excellent agreement with them. It distinguishes between developing and non-developing defects.