TSC Inspection Systems are working with the manufacturers of temporary and permanent steelworks at London Heathrow airport terminal 5 construction.

Terminal 5 is currently one of the largest construction projects in Europe. The single wave appearance of the main terminal building roof is accomplished by 11 pairs of steel support abutments supporting 22 steel box rafters.

The roof sections are raised into position using 'strand jacking' - each of the five lifts being around 2,500 tonnes.

The use of TSC's ACFM inspection techniques was effective in quickly and accurately assessing the integrity of the welded temporary steelwork of the jacking beams, through the paintwork, before the first lift took place.

TSC's involvement with T5 continues with ACFM inspection of the terminal substructure steelwork.

Inspection, Repair and Maintenance (IRM) is a core requirement for offshore oil and gas operators in all parts of the world. TSC provide a range of specialist IRM services worldwide, using both diver and remote intervention methods.

TSC Inspection Systems has participated in successful long-term IRM campaigns, working from Dive Support Vessels and fixed installations, for major operators in the UK, Danish and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea.

In collaboration with a leading underwater maintenance company in the UK, TSC Inspection Systems have developed an ACFM system and probe to provide accurate and reliable detection of defects in aluminium bronze Voith Schneider propulsor blades and phosphor bronze ships propellers.

The array probe is capable of inspecting a width of 40mm at once and detecting defects in all orientations in one pass.

Early detection of defects allows instant decisions to be made on whether components need to be replaced or condition monitoring carried out. The ability of ACFM to save all scan data allows direct comparison of defects and assessment of any propagation.

TSC Inspection Systems have provided a solution to the power generation industry for the rapid detection of transverse surface breaking cracks on the internal waterwalls of boilers - commonly occurring on the tube fins.

This has resulted in clients being able to rapidly assess the condition of the walls during the limited time available during a shutdown and repair or replace  tubes with confidence.

The TSC Waterwall array probe uses a contoured face that is customized for the specific tube external diameter. The scanner is manually moved along the tube wall to scan for defects.

The tubes are not required to be cleaned to the level necessary for ultrasonic or magnetic particle inspection. A modest uniform scale will still produce excellent results.

The Waterwall array probe uses no couplant and can detect small defects and defect areas that can be difficult to identify with other inspection methods.

Another project TSC have been involved with is the inspection of welds on an historic bridge, constructed in 1867, spanning the river Thames.

Longitudinal beam web repairs had been carried out on the bridge, involving joining the original cast iron material with steel.

Tests carried out on material samples prior to the inspection resulted in a high degree of confidence in the system for use on what is an unusual combination of welded materials, and the fact that there was a relatively thick primer and paint coating.

ACFM inspection was carried out using a hand held ACFM array probe with positioning encoder. The advantage of using the array system over single coil probes being that a much larger area could be inspected in one pass of the probe. In practice, an area of approximately 35mm wide was covered, thus inspection of the entire weld face and heat affected zone was accomplished in a single pass with the paint coating completely untouched.