Simulation of corrosion detection inside wellbore by X-ray backscatter radiography

摘要

Corrosion detection is very important in the oil industry to prevent costly consequences of damage from it. There are some techniques for detecting corrosion in pipelines. Backscatter radiography is an inspection technique for cases where the inspection should only be carried out in one side. In this paper, the backscatter effect for the radiography and in-situ detection of corrosion inside the pipelines (e.g. a wellbore) was studied. The simulation process allows determining the correctness and efficiency of the backscatter radiography technique before applying in a real system. Furthermore, the overall design characteristics of a system can be found by analyzing the effects of specific factors such as photon energy and location of detectors during the simulation process. The Monte Carlo calculation based simulation was studied to understand the impact of this technique on corrosion detection in a wellbore. The results showed that this technique is viable and fast and can be applied to find corrosion location and its severity inside a wellbore.