The four-day 6th Middle East Non-destructive Testing Conference and Exhibition (6MENDT) under the theme “NDT for asset integrity” opens on Sunday at the Gulf Hotel Gulf International Convention Centre.
Organised under the patronage of the Minister of State for Electricity and Water Affairs, Dr Abdul Hussain bin Ali Mirza, the conference is hosted by the Saudi American Chapter of the American Society for Non-destructive Testing and The Bahrain Society of Engineers.
Chairman of the conference and the steering committee, Ayedh S Al Saleh, said the sixth conference provides a platform to share the latest knowledge and experiences in methodologies and trends in this sphere for the oil and gas sector. He added that the NDT practice in the region is booming, as the region is the one of the largest in the world in producing oil and gas along with the surge in petrochemical development.
Vijay V Vesvikar of National Pipe Company Limited will present his paper on the present trends in qualification and certification systems for NDT personnel in the inaugural session simulation, training and qualification. Kevin Bolton from Stork Technical Services will present a paper on the importance of heat treatment engineering. Sam Shari will talk on an appropriate way of reducing delay in cracking of pipeline systems.
Bouden Toufik, Djerfi Fares, Dib Samira and Nibouche Mokhtar will talk on improving signal processing of the impact-echo method using Hilber Huang and Wavelet transforms.
The analytical and numerical calculation of the elastic properties for solid materials will be discussed by Toufik Benkedidah, Abdelmalek Bouhadjera of the University of Jijel. Khorshed Alamb, Ruhul Aminb, Tajammal Imran from KFUPM will give their experience on the design and construction of a radiation chamber at Hafr Al Batin Community College and Isaac Einav from Star IK will talk on how to be a success.
The second session will be on Advanced Ultrasonic, with Mohammed A. Abu four, Saudi Aramco talking on On-stream Inspection for Step-Wise Cracking Attack. Achieving higher quality results in utilization of Phased array Ultrasonic technique is the subject for Alam Abdul Nasser, Vignesh. M, of Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Company. A. K. Debbert and M. A. Al- Mubayidh of Saudi Aramco will present their views on Determination of the Extent of Hydrogen Induced Cracking and step wise cracking damage at NGL plant facilities.
F. Hagglund, M. Spicer, M. Troughton from TWI Ltd will discuss the phased array ultrasonic testing of welded joints in plastic (PE) pipes. Ultrasonic examination of SCC and SWC in ageing pipe systems and pipelines is the subject for Raymond J. Carswell of Saudi Aramco.
An adaptive phased array imaging method will be looked at by Joanna Qiao and Matthias Jobst, GE Inspection Technologies. Views on an improved pipeline AUT girth weld inspection system will be looked into by Sebastien Rigault and Michael Moles of Olympus NDT.
The third session will look at risk based inspection, fitness for services and plant integrity. While session four will look at advanced ultrasonic II, session five will look at boiler and heat exchanger methods, session six will delve into unpiggable pipes inspection, session seven will discuss general NDT I. Session eight will look into the general NDT II, session nine will look into corrosion under insulation inspection. Session 10 looks at plants and equipment inspection and session and the last session will look at non-metallic pipes inspection.