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TWI pioneers friction stir welding under oil

Mon, 11 March, 2019

TWI has recently delivered a significant technical achievement, the performance of a friction stir weld in steel, under oil. The work was undertaken as part of a collaborative project, FSWBot, which aims to develop a repair technique for sub-sea pipelines.

The project, sponsored by UKTI and led by Forth Engineering, seeks to integrate several state of the art technologies, including friction stir welding and ultrasonic NDT, onto a robotic system that can be deployed to conduct repairs inside pipelines without the need for the pipeline to be closed down for the duration of the repair.  The project will develop and demonstrate a prototype system capable of conducting a patch repair in steel to allow rectification of, for example, a corrosion induced defect.  If successful, it is envisaged that the system could be further developed to carry out a range of sub-sea repair and fabrication tasks.  The consortium would be interested in hearing from companies that might have an interest in such a system in order to take into account their potential needs and applications, thus helping to ensure that its benefits can be brought to as many industry sectors as possible.

See here for more details about Friction Stir Welding at TWI.

For further details, please contact us.

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contactus@twi.co.uk