Loosening Monitoring of the Threaded Pipe Connection Using Time Reversal Technique and Piezoceramic Transducers

Abstract

Threaded pipe connections are commonly used in the oil and gas industry in particular to connect casting strings, drill pipe strings, production and transportation risers, and pipelines. As the most critical components in the entire chain, maintaining a sealed and secure connection while being subjected to environmental loads and pollution is very important and necessary to reduce potential leakage risk and guarantee the safety of the entire chain. In this paper, an effective approach using time reversal technique and lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducer was developed to monitor the looseness of the threaded pipe connection. Two threaded pipeline segments connected with a metal coupling were assembled to simulate the threaded connection in the pipeline system. Two PZT patches were mounted on the surface of one pipeline segment and the pipe coupling, respectively. By loosening the threaded connection with different rotation angles, several looseness scenarios were experimentally investigated. For each looseness condition, the developed time reversal-based approach was performed and the corresponding response signal was acquired and analyzed. The experimental results demonstrate that the peak value of the focused signal detected by the PZT sensor decreases with the increase of the looseness degree. The entire test conducted from tightened connection to loosened connection was repeated eight times to validate the repeatability of the developed method and the consistency of the detection results. In addition, the reliability of the developed method was studied by involving high disturbances when the signal was measured. All the test results show that the developed method has a great potential to be employed in practical applications for monitoring the looseness condition of the threaded pipe connection, especially in an environment with severe noises and disturbances.

Design, Fabrication, and Evaluation of Multifocal Point Transducer for High-Frequency Ultrasound Applications

“…As the key component of ultrasonic transducer, certain piezoelectric materials including lead zirconate titanate (PZT) [21,22,23,24], lead niobiumzine zirconate titanate (PMN-PT) crystal [1,21,22,25,26,27], lithium niobate (LiNbO 3 ) single crystal [2,3,13,28,29], zinc oxide (ZnO) [12,28], and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film [3,5,6,9,30] have been extensively investigated and reported. The interesting properties of these piezoelectric materials including electromechanical coupling coefficient, acoustic impedance, dielectric constants, piezoelectric coefficients, and sound velocity have also been reported.…”

Experimental Evaluation of Miniature Impedance Board for Loosening Monitoring of the Threaded Pipe Connection

“…For example, a distributed temperature sensing system (DTS), combined with optical fibers, has been successfully employed to detect and locate leakage along the pipelines by monitoring variations in the surrounding temperature of the pipe [27,28]. In addition, the piezoceramic-based active sensing method combined with the time reversal technique has also been utilized to identify when the connection becomes loose and evaluate the severity of the looseness [29]. In 2018 [30], tried to apply an EMIbased technique to monitor the health condition of threaded pipe connections in real time, but the impedance signatures in this research were acquired by a professional impedance analyzer.…”

A Novel Embeddable Tubular Piezoceramics-Based Smart Aggregate for Damage Detection in Two-Dimensional Concrete Structures

“…Over decades of development, many advanced transducers have been reported in the literature to increase the accuracy of damage detection. The most widely reported categories of transducers include piezoelectric transducers [11,12,13,14], optical fiber sensors [15,16,17] and magnetic flux transducers [18], among others.…”