Author: Craig Champlin
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Why can’t I use odometry for ILI runcoms?
(15-minute read) Odometry is understood to be useful for sorting inspection features, but it is useless for comparing them. There is too much disagreement. This article presents an alternative to the common “wheel slip” explanation. It describes odometry errors as an unavoidable consequence of bias introduced during navigation by dead reckoning.
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Vocabulary for pipeline inspection matching (runcoms)
(5 Min Read – Industry) I am a data analyst. I have not seen a set of terminology that is from this perspective. These are the terms I use. Help me improve this? What is confusing?
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Integrated Cleaning and Inspecting Pig (ICIP): Part 2 – Proximity Sensors (2 of 2)
*(20 Min Read – Technical)* This write-up demonstrates that inexpensive inductive proximity sensors can be used to construct inexpensive inspection tools. Commercial proximity sensors have a proven track record of operating in harsh environmental conditions. They have high shock and vibration resistance. They are chemical resistant and resistant to short circuits. The sensors we used…
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Integrated Cleaning and Inspecting Pig (ICIP): Part 1 – Mechanical and Electronics (1 of 2)
*(10 Min Read)* This project aims to build an inexpensive screening pig. The use case is that this screening tool will be run frequently, and a composite understanding of the pipe wall will emerge by combining multiple assessments. To that end, the pig should be easy to operate and repair. A field hand should be…
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Calculating small distances between lat/long coordinates using Excel
*(Technical)* The most common GCS distance calculation, the Spherical Law of Cosines (SLoC), gives poor results at short distances. This is an issue when calculating joint lengths using latitude/ longitude pairs. At these short distances, the spherical law of cosines has a precision of only 4.5%. In contrast, the three alternate techniques I compare with…
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Combining sensing modalities
*(Technical)* Suppose you have had multiple sensors traverse a section of pipe with the intent of detecting axial cracking. Rather than concern ourselves with which tool does the “best” at detecting the phenomenon, we can treat the signal from each inspection as a piece of evidence supporting or refuting the hypothesis that axial cracking is…
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Why is it called ack?
*(2-minute read)* Short-cycle events like river scouring, tampering, and aggressive corrosion growth can compromise pipeline integrity between inspections and catch an operator unaware. acK for pipelines is a set of tools and practices to address these events using inexpensive, high-temporal-resolution pipeline state monitoring.
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A game of outliers
*(2-minute read)*Best practices are already pretty good. Best integrity management practices catch almost all cases of impending failures. What we need is a better way of catching outliers.
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A Dashboard for Pipeline Integrity
A dashboard for pipeline integrity to aid in compliance with US rules for integrity management “I want to log-on to my computer and be told the status of the system. Today, I have to ask a specific engineer that looks after the area I want to know about who says he will get back to me. Two…
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In search of efficiency for pipeline integrity management…
A different approach to IM… I think that a dashboard is needed. Think about an airplane cockpit. In a mature aircraft, like a 737, there are tons of instruments, controls, and warnings. In contrast, the simplest planes may only have an airspeed indicator, altimeter, and a compass. These three basic instruments are technically very simple…
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What’s the best way to do more with less?
I just got off the phone with an operator who said, “this year has been the worst year I can remember in terms of having to do more things with less money. It has been a real struggle to get this year end closed.” The price of gas is down. The integrity rules have placed…
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What is pipeline integrity management, really?
A point of confusion… Recently I had a conversation that went badly. Examining it in hindsight it is clear that I was on a completely different wavelength regarding the definition of integrity management. This is not the first time that the definition of integrity management has caused me to have a confusing conversation. The confusion…
acK for pipeline integrity 