As water authorities face the critical task of delivering our most precious resource, they need a reliable way to determine the remaining service life of ageing infrastructure.
Australia’s fluctuating climate pushes critical water systems to their limits. Hot, dry conditions exacerbate water scarcity, and the accompanying harsh UV degrades water transport and storage assets, causing them to crack and leak.
On the other hand, intense floods and storms risk physical damage to treatment plants and pipelines, and lead to significant fluctuations in water quality, including increased turbidity and algal blooms.
In turn, these stressors team up with varied soil and water conditions to exacerbate corrosion and promote premature degradation of vital water infrastructure – and as those asset age, the risk of failure only increases.
Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites offer an alternative to traditional materials like steel, ductile iron and concrete that can better withstand extreme temperatures and harsh conditions. These composites are immune corrosion, and their non-porous surface prevents biofilm and sediment buildup, FRP composite tanks and above-ground pipes can also be manufactured with UV-resistant coatings that protect them from the intense Australian sun.
Despite their durability, FRP composites are also inherently lightweight and can be easily transported and installed in remote or disaster affected areas.
Designed for a longer lifespan at lower cost than stainless steel, FRP composites are already widely used in potable water and wastewater systems for pipes, storage tanks, scrubbers, ducting, covers and other equipment.
While FRP has a long design life, maintaining these assets poses unique challenges as internal defects like delamination or fibre breakage are often hard to detect, and although there are established objective methods for determining remaining service life of steel asset, there are no standards for determining ongoing fitness-for-service of FRP
Navigating hidden challenges requires proactive solutions, however, traditional assessment techniques rely on visual inspection – and not only are these methods time-consuming, the provide limited insight and require the asset to taken offline.
RPC Technologies is one of the most experienced manufacturers of FRP assets in Australia and it also has the exclusive licence to a world-leading condition assessment technology, UltraAnalytix®.
UltraAnalytix leverages sophisticated ultrasonic technology to perform in-service condition assessments of FRP pipes and tanks, and this proven non-intrusive and non-destructive evaluation method provides objective data to evaluate the current condition and remaining service life of FRP equipment without the need for costly shutdowns.
This detailed data helps asset owners to shift to a more proactive maintenance strategy, and regular condition assessment and inspection using the UltraAnalytix® system can help the water sector significantly reduce losses of valuable assets through leaks and other failures, improve safety and reliability, and increase operational uptime and lower capital replacement costs.
UltraAnalytix® non-destructive testing is a fast, accurate, safe and cost-effective way for asset owners to assess the remaining service life of their FRP assets while avoiding unnecessary downtime and replacements.
For more information, visit rpctechnologies.com
