Implementation of High Magnetization System for Performance Enhancement of Magnetic Flux Leakage Tool

This paper discusses the effectiveness of high magnetization saturation in ILI (In-Line Inspection) using an MFL (Magnetic Flux Leakage) tool, and introduces a practical method for improving the magnetization level together with the piggability. Thin steel plates, replacing the conventional wire brushes were used as conductors to transfer the magnetic flux to the pipe wall. The newly designed MFL tool was compared with the conventional version by means of FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis and full-scale experiments. In the results, the newly developed magnetization system obtained a stronger MFL signal amplitude, specially 2.7 times stronger, than that obtained by the conventional magnetization system for the same defect dimensions.