Development Of AE Monitoring System For Offshore Platform Jacket Structures

Offshore platform is a large spatial truss structure, whose key part is jacket. The construction quality of jacket has a direct impact on overall quality of the offshore platform. So the healthy monitoring of jacket has attracted more and more attention. Compared to other non-destructive monitoring tools, the technique of structural health monitoring based on acoustic emission (AE) is very useful and effective for detection of a wide range on structure.A complete AE monitoring system, which can complete the task from sampling AE signal to analyzing data, is necessary in order to monitor offshore platform using AE technique. Currently the AE monitoring systems which most enterprise and research institutes used are provided by US PAC company and Germany Vallen company. However, these systems have many limitations in function, and are not suitable to monitor offshore platform structure. Therefore, the development of a special AE monitoring system more suitable for offshore platform, has an important meaning to promote the marine oil development toward depth and breadth.A complete AE monitoring system consists of AE signal sample card, WDM driver, AE monitoring system software and other related accessories. The main contents of this article are as follows:a) The background of offshore platform health monitoring and AE technique and the progress of research at home and abroad was described. The significance of development AE monitoring system was also discussed.b) The framework and function requirement were put forward, and the process was partitioned into three parts:development of AE signal sample card, WDM driver, monitoring system software.c) The development process of AE signal sample card was described. It mainly included the developing DSP and CPLD.d) The complete development of WDM driver was introduced, including installing development tools, generating framework of driver, programing control code and secondary packaging.e) The implementation of function modules in monitoring system software was described, including system setting module, realtime monitor and reback data module, post-processing module.f) A study of the acoustic propagation characteristics in T-structure jacket has been carried out by using ansys. And it was helpful to improve the AE monitoring system.