Capacitive Imaging Technique for the Inspection of Composite Sucker Rod

Abstract Composite sucker rod has been extensively used due to its high strength, light weight and corrosion resistive nature. However, such composite sucker rod is difficult for conventional non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques to inspect because of its complex material and/or structure. It is thus useful to embark research on developing novel NDE technique to comply the inspection requirement. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using the capacitive imaging (CI) technique for the inspection of composite sucker rod. Finite element (FE) models were constructed in COMSOL to simulate the detection of defects in the glass-fiber layer and on the carbon core surface. An FE Model based inversion method is proposed to obtain the profile of the carbon core. Preliminary CI experimental results are then presented, including the detection of surface wearing defect in the glass-fiber layer, and obtaining the profile of the carbon core. A set of accelerated aging experiments were also carried out and the results indicate that the CI technique is potentially useful in evaluating the ageing status of such composite sucker rod. The CI technique described in this work shows great potential to target some challenging tasks faced in the non-destructive evaluation of composite sucker rod, including quality control, defect detection and ageing assessment.