These cylinders are subject to the legal requirements of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and S12169 "The pressure Systems Regulations 1989".

These regulations and Naval Engineering Standards define the requirements for the design, manufacture and in-service maintenance practices for such systems, maintenance requirements stipulate the need to comply with a formal, audible inspection and testing policy with the aim of ensuring system integrity and personnel safety. Normal industrial and marine practice is to remove cylinders to a workshop environment to undertake inspection and revalidation. This practice is both intrusive, time consuming and problematic due to decreasing refit times coupled with the restricted space removal routes encountered on board. This paper will describe the progress made to date in the development and manufacture of an inspection system able to demonstrate the integrity of these cylinders without removal from the vessel, thus leading to a cost effective alternative to previous practice.

The Ships Support Agency have been working with AEA Sonomatic for two years on this project leading to an initial demonstration of a working automated scanning mechanism combined with a series of advanced NDE methods as an aid to the revalidation process. In addition to the system described a significant amount of work has been carried out on board using advanced inspection technology in support of the ongoing validation programme.