Holosense is a pipe inspection, measurement and analysis system that has been developed in response to the mining industry’s need for quick accurate measurement of paste fill borehole pipes.

Features:

• Hi quality colour imagery
• Measures pipes ~82 – 200 mm ID
• 1000 m maximum pipe length
• Real time data processing
• Quickly identifies worn areas of pipes

High quality imagery and accurate measurements of installed pipes provide vital information on the state of crucial infrastructure and facilitate informed decisions for better management of maintenance programs and less downtime.

Holosense is an inspection and measurement system specifically designed in response to a market requirement for quick and accurate pipeline surveys at underground mine paste fill operations. Currently Holosense surveys are being offered as part of a service to underground mine operators with the option to hire the equipment.

Measurements

A ring of laser light is projected onto the inside wall of the pipe using a holographic diffraction element and conical mirror. A machine vision camera captures the shape of the ring and tracks small changes in the shape of the ring and relates to real world measurements of the pipe diameter. The performance of Holosense as a measurement tool are:

• ± 0.5 mm accuracy measurement of true round pipes
• 82 – 250 mm ID pipe measurement range
• 1° angular resolution
• 5 -25 mm vertical resolution (speed dependent)
• 15 – 0.35 m/s winching speed
• 30 Hz – Typical sampling rate/frame rate

Survey Preparation

Holosense, being an entirely visual measurement tool, requires a clean internal pipe wall in order to take meaningful measurements of pipe wear.  In a paste fill survey application this is achieved by performing a system flush prior to the commencement of the survey.

Once the pipe has been flushed, Holosense can be set up in position quickly. The winch is placed in position and the fibre optic cable passed over the depth measuring sheave wheel and auxiliary sheave wheel. The Holosense measurement tool is then connected with a military fibre optic connector and centralisers attached and adjusted as required. A field laptop connects to the winch via an Ethernet cable to control camera settings and measurement parameters from the surface.

Data Processing

Realtime visualisation and data processing are made possible by the high speed fibre optic link between the instrument and computer. With a 1000 m cable and reasonably powerful laptop images are typically recorded and processed at 30 fps. This means that at a descent/ascent rate of 0.3 m/s a reading of diameter min/max/average is given every 10 mm. An intuitive graphical user interface allows all data to be quickly assessed and areas of high pipe wear readily seen. All video footage and measurement data can be recorded to disk for further analysis and processing.