Ultrasonic Inspection of Oil & Gas Pipelines

A manufacturer of testing equipment for the oil refining industry needed a cable for ultrasonic inspection of oil and gas pipelines in Alaska to test for corrosion and cracks in the pipeline. The cable had to connect many different types of instrumentation to a central recording station for power and data transmission. The finished cable had an inner core of sixteen 24 AWG conductors with a shield and PVC jacket. The intermediate layer has 9 twisted shielded pairs of 20 AWG stranded copper with an overall PVC jacket. The outer layer has 4 individually jacketed pairs, 8 triaxial cables for cameras, one tube for the ultrasonic testing liquid, and two twisted pairs with a fiberglass and stainless steel braid as well as a PVC jacket. All this went under a blue polyurethane jacket for a finished cable under one and a half inches in diameter.