How Thickness Monitoring Programs Help Safely Operate Static Equipment

Thickness monitoring is a crucial aspect of mechanical integrity in industries such as oil and gas, chemical, and power generation. It involves measuring the thickness of static assets, such as pressure vessels, piping, tanks, exchangers, and boilers, to identify areas of corrosion or erosion that can compromise the equipment's integrity and pose a safety risk.

Asset Performance Management (APM) software for Mechanical Integrity supports your operation team’s thickness monitoring (TM) efforts by providing a centralized platform to calculate the remaining life based on the minimum thickness required to safely operate assets. The TM analysis results are seamlessly integrated back to the Risk based Inspection (RBI) module in APM to calculate risk.  

APM software for Mechanical Integrity can support thickness monitoring in several ways, including:

• Automated Data Collection: Asset Performance Management software can automate the collection of thickness data from Thickness Measurement Locations (TMLs) using ultrasonic thickness gauges and dataloggers, reducing the risk of human error and increasing efficiency.
   
• Thickness monitoring (Tmin) Calculator: Asset Performance Management software provides the necessary tools to calculate the minimum thickness levels that pressurized assets will typically experience. Alerts can be sent to integrity managers to manage equipment health. Furthermore, users have the flexibility to configure additional minimum thickness calculations based on industry standards.
   
• Stress Tables: Asset Performance Management software provides out-of-the-box stress tables as per American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards for equipment types such as pressure vessels, piping, and tanks.
   
• Inspection Budgeting and Turnaround Planning: Asset Performance Management software improves inspection budgeting and turnaround planning with the corrosion analysis tool, to predict remaining life, plan for repairs and replacements.
   
• Bulk Calculations: Asset Performance Management software bulk provides bulk calculations in Thickness Monitoring, enabling corrosion analyses to be run on multiple assets.
   
• Compliance Management: Asset Performance Management software can track and manage compliance with thickness monitoring regulations and standards, such as API 570 and API 653, to ensure regulatory compliance and avoid penalties.
   
• Greater Contextual Awareness: Asset Performance Management software can leverage any industrial drawings and embed thickness monitoring data in 2D to help contextualize critical corrosion analyses data on an asset, system, or process unit level. Through our partnership with Visionaize, thickness data can also be visualized on a 3D model. The tight integration with V-Suite and APM allows users to visualize different TMLs and Corrosion Monitoring Locations (CML) and access attribute information such as remaining life, corrosion rate, minimum thickness, etc. in a single view on the 3D model.
   

By supporting thickness monitoring, APM software for Mechanical Integrity enables organizations to effectively manage their corrosion and thickness measurement programs, improve accuracy of end-of-life estimation, and reduce equipment failures. Armed with this knowledge, teams can also prevent equipment failures that can lead to adverse safety or environmental events.

Read our new customer success story where a leading energy company in South Africa utilized Thickness Monitoring to load more than 67,000 corrosion monitoring location (CML) tasks and implement 17,000+ thickness monitoring location (TML) groups.

In addition to Thickness monitoring, APM software for Mechanical Integrity  also includes an integrated set of tools such as Risk Based Inspection (RBI) and Inspection Management to help energy firms reduce risk, lower inspection costs, and manage compliance. Preview our new interactive demo experience of the Mechanical Integrity application. See how a reliability manager & his team of RBI analysts, inspectors and corrosion analysts utilize GE Digital’s APM Integrity software for to mitigate risks and costs associated with static equipment.