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The subsea inspection plays a primary role in the integrity management of subsea assets. A wide variety of equipment, such as wet Christmas Trees (XMT), Pipes, Umbilical's, Mooring Lines and Manifolds are periodically inspected. The inspection frequency depends on the type of equipment and the boundary conditions applied to them, being usually based on the risk associated within the operation of the subsea assets. The subsea system integrity management plan consists of activities such as visual inspections, functional test of safety valves, measurement of electrochemical potential, measurement of Pipe thickness and pressure tightness test of safety valves. These operations have been traditionally carried out by RSV vessels (ROV Support Vessel), which require around 40 people on board and up to 10m3/day of diesel. In a context of great demand for reducing POB (People on Board), and so the human exposure to risk, and also the urgency for GHG (Green House Gases) emission reduction, the market has been pushed to develop new inspection technologies. The field operator, strategically aligned with this vision, has been supporting, through R&D projects, the development of the AUV for their challenging scenarios.
Sewald et al. (Mon,) studied this question.