Development of an ultrasonic thickness measurement equipment prototype

The present work shows the development of both a pulse-receiver circuit and acquisition circuit prototypes of ultrasonic signals for the measurement of thickness in oil pipelines using a Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG). The development parameters count with restrictions of space, sampling velocity and storage capacity, and besides they have to satisfy the norms applied in oil pipeline inspection by the PIG. The prototypes consist of several functional blocks; a pulsed circuit that excites the transducer generating a high voltage pulse of about -200 V, a receiver circuit for the reception of the transducer signal, a filter and amplifying block, and finally acquisition and processing step for signals composed by one ADC, a FPGA and a microcontroller.