Ship Inspection

This project was part of the Department of National Defence (DND) Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) Corrosion Detection in Ships (CDIS) Sandbox in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The testing and demonstration took place over a number of days at the Centre for Ocean Ventures & Entrepreneurship (COVE) facility, with observational feedback provided by DND and Canadian Forces subject matter experts. The sandbox offered variety of corroded test panels for testing in a laboratory setting, as well as access to the coastal patrol vessel HMCS Goose Bay for field testing onboard a Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) ship (Note: All photographs on this page are courtesy of Steven Berry, DRDC/DND).

InspecTerra is grateful to the DND, the event organizers, RCN personnel, and the IDEaS program for inviting us to this exclusive event, and allowing us to demonstrate how our innovative passive magnetic inspection (PMI) technology can be used to detect and assess corrosion behind surface coatings (such as paint, insulation, tiles, seamless decking, etc.) in order to reduce corrosion’s operational impact and improve the effectiveness of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities.

You can learn more about the Sandbox and InspecTerra's participation at

• CFB Halifax Trident Navy Newspaper article by Joanie Veitch - Trident Staff

• CBC News story by Brett Ruskin - CBC

Corrosion Mapping Behind Surface Coatings

InspecTerra’s novel iCAMM inspection tool is able to detect and map steel corrosion behind any type of non-ferromagnetic cover or coatings, such as paint, insulation, vinyl, tiling, non-skid decking, etc. While conventional NDT inspection is often hindered by the requirement for extensive surface preparation and the presence of moisture and salt (particularly in marine environments), our iCAMM technology is free from these limitations, and provides rapid and reliable mapping of section loss in critical elements.

During the CDIS Sandbox, InspecTerra mapped a total of 17 different areas onboard the HMCS Goose Bay for corrosion. These areas were located at different parts of the ship, including interior gangways, landings, the galley, shower and toilet areas, as well as various outside locations on the aft and forward decks. While these areas were covered by different surface treatments, e.g., paint, vinyl, tiling, non-skid coating, etc., each area was scanned in multiple iCAMM passes quickly and effectively with no need for any special surface preparation.

The results for each section clearly identify the critical areas of corrosion in the form of easily interpretable heat maps.

Because the iCAMM tool is not only fast, but also easy to use, it is ideally suited for rapidly identifying critical areas of corrosion for more detailed examinations (e.g., using UT). As an example, consider the 65 x 90 cm test section of a slanted wall panel on the forward deck of the ship that was scanned using iCAMM during the CDIS Sandbox.

The wall panel was 6 mm thick (nominal) steel, with standard light gray surface paint. Because of no need for any special surface preparation, the entire test area was scanned in 8 separate passes in less than 10 minutes. The normal operating speed for the iCAMM tool is approximately 1 to 2 metres/minute, depending on the application.

Initial visual examination of the surface showed only a few areas with some surface rust, suggesting minimal corrosion present in the panel. However, the iCAMM results clearly identified other areas of the wall panel with significant wall thickness loss taking place. These critical areas were verified and confirmed with separate ultrasonic (UT) thickness measurements, indicating > 60 % wall thickness loss.

This application demonstrated the key advantages of rapid corrosion mapping using iCAMM, which include

• identifying all the critical locations of corrosion over large areas,

• helping to guide more detailed examinations (e.g., using the UT method), and as a result

• saving inspection time and cost.

In this case, the rapidly generated iCAMM heat map was used to select a handful of UT test locations (4 or 5 points only), which not only verified and confirmed the iCAMM findings, but were also used to calibrate the results and obtain a map of the actual wall thickness loss across the entire test area.

Using the UT method alone in this case would have provided wall thickness data at only a handful of spots/points, and more importantly, may have missed the areas of maximum corrosion entirely, since there was no visible evidence of the corrosion on the panel surface at these locations.

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Piping Inspection

As part of the IDEaS Corrosion Detection in Ships (CDIS) Sandbox in Halifax, Nova Scotia, InspecTerra's passive magnetic inspection (PMI) technology was also used to map corrosion in piping onboard the HMCS Goose Bay. The steel piping, located on the aft deck of the ship, was 11.6 cm in diameter with a wall thickness of 7.2 mm (nominal). The piping was painted with standard light gray paint.

The scanning was carried out using a small portable hand-held PMI inspection device in time-of-flight mode. A thin cardboard grid was wrapped around the piping to guide the inspections. The circumference of the 65 cm long pipe test section was covered by multiple axial passes using the PMI inspection tool (Note: All photographs on this page are courtesy of Steven Berry, DRDC/DND).

Similar to the scans conducted on other parts of the ship, the pipe test section was scanned quickly and effectively by the PMI device to produce a heat map of corrosion. The results clearly identified significant areas of corrosion at 3 and 9 o'clock positions around the pipe. This pattern of corrosion is explained by the fact that the pipe is only half full, with corrosion occurring along the air/fluid interface along the sides of the piping.

The remaining pipe wall thickness was verified and calibrated using separate UT (point) measurements at key locations. These critical areas were easy to identify and select using the PMI scan results, and ensured that the pipe minimum thickness was captured by the UT spot scans (which would have been difficult to do otherwise). As shown by the calibrated results, there is significant local corrosion taking place in the pipe, with some areas experiencing > 50 % wall thickness loss.

A similar scanning test was performed on a nearby pipe bend, with the results also showing significant (> 60 %) wall thickness loss in the Extrados/Right Cheek region of the bend.

This application demonstrated the key advantages of the PMI technology, including the ability to quickly map corrosion over an area, which can then be used to guide more detailed examinations (e.g., using UT), thereby saving inspection time and cost, and increasing confidence in the overall results.

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