Mining Sector
Mining has played a crucial role throughout history, from ancient civilizations, through the Industrial Revolution with coal and into the modern era.
Although mining may seem to be an ageing practice, the demand for minerals for low-carbon technology, such as solar panels, batteries for electric vehicles, wind turbines, etc, means that mining is a massive industry vital for the future.
NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) in mining plays a crucial role in evaluating the integrity and proper functionality of equipment and structures that are working in incredibly harsh environments. An unplanned shutdown due to a failure of equipment can cause severe downtime and expense for repairs; when used correctly, NDT can highlight areas of potential failure before they happen, allowing for mine owners to plan shutdowns and maintenance in advance.
1. Inspection Areas
- Welds: UT weld inspection highlights hidden discontinuities caused by construction and in-service damage.
- Structural integrity: UT inspection can highlight structural integrity issues such as wall losses due to corrosion.
- Conveyor belt reinforcement: UT inspection can show damage to conveyor belt reinforcement wires and show the integrity of repairs.
- Gear inspection on rock drums: PA checking cracks appearing at the tooth’s root.
2. Challenges
- Harsh environments: Equipment can be in extremely harsh environments, the Sonatest equipment can handle temperature extremes and high particulate areas.
Sonatest has specialised solutions for all aspects of inspection in the mining industry, The VEO3 is a multi-technique specialist system capable of performing phased array weld inspection and corrosion mapping, also included are TFM (Total Focusing Method), TFMi and TOFD (Time of Flight Diffraction) (Time of Flight Diffraction) inspection methods, each providing further inspection solutions to the inspector.
The Wheel Probe 2 allows large areas to be corrosion mapped quickly and with minimum water needed in the area.
The Wave interactive flaw detector with its CAD import scan plan allows the visual representation of complex geometry parts, showing exactly where signals originate from, making it easier to differentiate a geometric signal from a defect signal, reducing false calls and saving time and money in the process.
Mining Resources
