Robotic Guy Wire Inspections
In Service Flare Stack Inspections using Magnetic Flux Leakage

Magnetic flux devices are well suited for measuring Loss of cross sectional Metallic Area (LMA). LMA produces an absolute change in overall magnetic flux throughout the cross-section.

As long as the wire rope is saturated with a sufficiently strong magnetic field, LMA is easily and accurately measured by an arrangement of annular coils, semi-annular coils,or magnetometers. Since magnetic flux flows equally throughout the cross-section of the wire rope, LMA within the interior is just as easily measured as that on the exterior of the wire rope.

Since corrosion products are non-magnetic, LMA is an ideal measurement for directly quantifying the loss of tensile strength due to corrosion.

Since the mining industry has been concerned almost exclusively with wire breaks, LMA measurements for corrosion quantification remain a rather undeveloped, untested, and unevaluated potential for magnetic flux technology.

For wire rope inspection, the rope generally runs through a magnetizing sensor head. For application on a stationary guy, a moving inspection tool
must travel along and high up a stationary guy. The robotic device can be easily driven up a wire rope saturating and magnetizing the steel and taking LMA and corrosion readings in real time.

IPC has taken the technology to a new level with devices that can not only inspect guy wires, cranes, hoists and pulleys but ones that can run up a bridge cable stay and peer through the HDPE sheathing to properly inspect a bridge cable. It can do this with no lane closures or bucket trucks.

What is having quantitative data of a critical infrastructure asset worth for the same taxpayer dollar? Data that can make the difference in properly budgeting for repairs as well as the safety of the inspectors and traveling public.