The Norwegian based company TSC Subsea has designed a new remotely deployed tool. The ART vCaliper is designed specifically to inspect ovality and wall thickness in constricted locations.

This customized tool was designed and built in less than four weeks to meet the precise requirements of a project in the Gulf of Mexico. It is developed to perform ovality and thickness checks on a potential hot tapping location on a gas pipeline of a semi-submersible platform. The access to the hot tapping inspection site was crowded with pipe work and clamps. Due to this environment the use of standard scanners was very difficult and posed a danger to divers.

The ART vCaliper was developed to overcome these problems. It’s a non-intrusive, remotely deployed advance inspection system, that uses field proven Acoustic Resonance Technology (ART) for inspection.

The new tool is the only high-resolution inspection technology available that can actually penetrate thick subsea coating and provide highly accurate ovality and direct quantitative wall thickness measurements (to a depth sizing ± 0.2mm). Part of the tool are two transducers 180°apart. The transducers collect data simultaneously with a minimum collection of 3 readings for ovality. The current design scope caters for inspection from 6 - 20”, but it can be easily engineered to any diameters required.

The ART vCaliper reduces operational costs, due to it's limited surface preparation and reducing vessel time. The tool is described as lightweight and equiped with a magnetic motorless arc to fasten on a pipe. With the help of an ROV it provides full 360° coverage around the pipe. It easily interfaces with all common ROV.

The tool was deployed in the Gulf of Mexico along with MagCrawler that uses ACFM® technology to conduct a combined caliper, wall thickness and weld inspection in a single campaign.