Investigation of casing inspection through tubing with pulsed eddy current

Abstract

Corrosion and cracks of casing string in oil wells is a serious problem on which little research has been done when inspecting casing through tubing. In this study, inspecting casing through tubing with pulsed eddy current is investigated. Longitudinal and transverse probes are centred inside the tubing to detect wall thinnings and cracks in casing. A time slice of induced voltage in the receiving coil of the probe is used as the feature to recognise defects. The experimental results show that large area wall thinnings and long cracks in casing are detected successfully through the tubing with appropriate inspection parameters. The probe's orientation to the crack is important and a particular discovery is that the transverse probe should be parallel to the transverse crack and not be perpendicular to it when inspecting. A method based on linear regression is proposed to estimate flaws in casing while wall thinning in the tubing occurs at the same location. The method is effective for large area thinning in casing when tubing thinning is wide.

Keywords:

• pulsed eddy current
• casing
• tubing
• inspection
• ferromagnetic

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province of China (Grant No. GZW1530) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51067007).