MAPS inspection and monitoring technology

Protecting flexible risers

MAPS® is the industry's premium technology for the management of flexible risers from all manufacturers. It has a unique capability to assess the integrity of the primary load-bearing elements within the pipe design, the steel armor wires. Available as an inspection service or as an installed monitoring system, MAPS can be applied topsides or subsea, retrofitted on installed pipe, or incorporated into a new development.

Reach a new level of integrity assessment in flexible pipes

The complexity of the structure of flexible pipe make conventional inspection and monitoring techniques ineffective. Critical pipe locations are also often difficult to reach, either because they are subsea or because the presence of ancillary equipment prevents access to areas of integrity threat. The underlying MAPS technology—a non-destructive, non-contacting technique for measuring stress in steel materials—overcomes these challenges through the concept of reach.

Conventional inspection technologies require the exact location of the defect and must be positioned over the affected area. Reach is the ability to sense the effect of a wire defect, such as a break, many meters from the actual damage site. This is of particular advantage in assessing integrity in and near the splash zone and up to the top termination, where there may be no access to the pipe.

Multiple benefits of our inspection and monitoring technologies include:

• Provision of integrity assurance of key elements in the flexible pipe design
• Contribution to life-extension initiatives
• Management of end-of-life scenarios
• Confirmation of fitness for service of damaged pipe and demonstration of performance of repairs
• Provision of data to allow continued operation in response to changing service conditions
• Ability to sense the effect of a wire break many meters (+/- 15 m) from the damage site (reach)
• Deployable topsides, or subsea using divers or an ROV
• Validated as part of the Baker Hughes flexible-pipe qualification program
• Versatility—applicable to flexible risers from all manufacturers
• Discriminating—providing integrity information wire by wire and layer by layer