Understanding when to intervene with scheduled maintenance on production assets is a critical business decision, balancing commercial opportunities whilst ensuring continued asset integrity. Without condition information, most critical bolted connections offer little scope to optimise maintenance practices.
EchoBolt's engineering team has recently supported a major oil and gas supplier with extended validation trials of critical bolted infrastructure to develop a detailed understanding of changes in bolt preload through elastic interactions during assembly and monitoring embedment losses over time.
Utilising cutting edge ultrasonic measurement techniques, in combination with high accuracy loadcell washers, the Echobolt team has been able to push the boundaries of measurement accuracy. The comprehensive monitoring campaign has provided key inferences about offshore asset condition, informing design decisions, and validating cutting edge bolt tightening technologies to be utilised for future installations.
Reliable measurement of bolt condition information has once again proved to be key in unlocking value through optimised maintenance and asset integrity assurance.