Non-Destructive Testing of Plastics and Composites in the Chemical Processing Industry

Equipment and components made of plastics and composites are widely used in highly corrosive environments in the processing industry. Examples are the storage tanks, pumps and pipes for chemical transport and stacks in combustion plants. The demand for reliable nondestructive testing of plastic process equipment has increased significantly in recent years. Glass fiber reinforced plastics (GRP) is a common construction material for process equipment in the chemical industry. It can be used both as structural bearing in a dual laminate with a thermoplastic material as a corrosion barrier or as a solid GRP. In the latter case, the laminate is generally built up with a resin rich corrosion barrier (about 2.5 to 5 mm thick) with a low content of glass closest to the chemical. The glass fiber in this layer is usually a surface veil and chopped strand mats (CSM), i.e. it has no general fiber orientation. Outside this is the structural bearing layer with much higher glass content, usually wound fiber and / or woven fiber mats with a preferential fiber direction. The corrosion barrier is not load bearing and corrosion of this layer can be allowed. However, no corrosion can be permitted in the structural support layer. Because of this it is important to measure the thickness of the corrosion barrier for quality control but also to determine how far an attack has reached in the corrosion barrier. Today there is no non-destructive testing method that can answer this. Instead destructive sampling (often a drill core) must be made. This is difficult, expensive and sometimes impossible. There is thus a great interest in a method that, preferably at any time during operation, can provide answers to these questions. Due to the heterogeneity of the GRP material in terms of amount, type and direction of the fibers, conventional algorithm for ultrasound imaging will not work. One aim of our work is thus to develop new signal processing methods to handle this heterogeneity. In addition we are also looking at the possibility to use optical fibers and Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors for corrosion monitoring of GRP structure