ACFM

Theme Park Applications

Introduction

Theme parks are visited by thousands of people world-wide and the rides are becoming more adventurous by demand. This places a greater strain on the material being used and fracture mechanics analysis is being carried out to determine the critical defect size that can be allowed to exist. From a customer satisfaction point of view the rides must be available when the theme park is open which in some cases is all year. This means inspection techniques have to be used which are non-invasive but which can reliably detect the even smaller defects required to be detected.

Overview

The most important steps to managing health and safety are planning, organizing, controlling and reviewing. The amusement trade associations recognize four types of inspection for devices – design review, assessment of conformity to design, initial test and thorough examination. Non-destructive testing is an important part of the thorough examination stage.

Theme park rides are made up of several component parts. The structural section of the ride is very similar to the tubulars found in offshore structures with fairly long chord and brace node welds in the track and support areas. Thus the problems of inspection are more of access than geometry. The foundation base sections have short fillet welds with access holes similar to those found in offshore sections.

Samples have been made to examine UK technicians using the ACFM technique to inspect topside production plant and the geometry of the samples were similar to those found in the construction of theme park rides.

The carriages, axles and carts or trucks have a different problem. Most of the welds on these components are short and have difficult access. This creates two problems one of end effect and the other of weld presentation. To reliably inspect these welds there is a requirement to have small probes with high sensitivity and little response to edge effect and hard wearing probe faces.

TSC Inspection Systems have addressed these problems with the introduction of the mini and micro pencil probes for use with the Amigo instrument. Both of these probe types have either straight or 90-degree access and have ceramic probe faces. The mini and micro probes have slightly different sensitivity in that one can typically detect defects 1mm deep and the other 0.5mm.

A new range of control software, ASSIST, has also been produced, which has additional features to assist the operator in the display and interpretation of ACFM data. This software also provides automatic data management and the ability to select and print single scans of data. Different values of lift-off can also be selected in order to inspect through different thicknesses of coating. A key feature of ACFM is that all data, irrespective of whether there is a defect signal, is stored and available for review or audit.

The combination of these developments allows the experience gained from critical offshore inspection to be applied to the inspection of the theme park components so that they can be carried out more efficiently and reliably.

Theme park inspection, with the emphasis on safety of personnel and integrity of inspection, requires a technique that can reliably detect defects and size them through coatings of various types. Trials carried out in the past have shown that the ACFM technique can detect and size defects as well or better than conventional surface breaking detection techniques and its performance will not deteriorate when inspecting through paint or other forms of non-conductive coating. Therefore with the added benefit of not requiring paint removal or refurbishment, the application of ACFM should provide an economic benefit for the inspection of theme parks.

Bespoke Systems

	Project	Equipment
	Major theme parks in Europe and the United States	All TSC's theme park and ride engineering inspection systems are custom made to specific client requirements.
	ACFM has been used in theme parks in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. At one theme park the track of one of the rides had previously been inspected during the annual shutdown when a number of supports were stripped of paint, inspected using magnetic particle inspection techniques, and repainted. A change to inspection using the ACFM technique with no prior cleaning or repainting led to around twice as many supports being inspected in the first week alone.   Bespoke automated ACFM systems have been built and commissioned by TSC to run along entire lengths of roller coaster tracks to inspect the running rails. This has allowed complete inspection of the rails, through coatings, resulting in huge savings in downtime.

Roller Coaster inspection, UK

	Project	Equipment
	Roller coaster, UK	U19 AMIGO instrument 40mm 8 channel flat array probe 5KHz Standard weld probe 5KHz Encoder weld probe 5KHz
	A leading theme park in the UK needed to inspect their premier attraction roller coaster. At a height of just over 230 feet, it is one of Europe's tallest rollercoasters, with a track length in excess of 5000 ft and maximum vertical angle over 60 degrees. The client did not want to remove any paint  and have negligible interruption to revenue and maintenance schedules. ACFM, with rope access technicians was the solution. The inspection was carried out through a paint coating and a base galvanic coating. No problems encountered. Safe in the knowledge the track was up to specification, the park was 'business as usual' within 24 hours.

Crack Detection / Applications / Theme Parks    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next