Pipeline In-Line Inspection Method, Instrumentation and Data Management

Abstract

Pipelines play an important role in the national/international transportation of natural gas, petroleum products, and other energy resources. Pipelines are set up in different environments and consequently suffer various damage challenges, such as environmental electrochemical reaction, welding defects, and external force damage, etc. Defects like metal loss, pitting, and cracks destroy the pipeline’s integrity and cause serious safety issues. This should be prevented before it occurs to ensure the safe operation of the pipeline. In recent years, different non-destructive testing (NDT) methods have been developed for in-line pipeline inspection. These are magnetic flux leakage (MFL) testing, ultrasonic testing (UT), electromagnetic acoustic technology (EMAT), eddy current testing (EC). Single modality or different kinds of integrated NDT system named Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG) or un-piggable robotic inspection systems have been developed. Moreover, data management in conjunction with historic data for condition-based pipeline maintenance becomes important as well. In this study, various inspection methods in association with non-destructive testing are investigated. The state of the art of PIGs, un-piggable robots, as well as instrumental applications, are systematically compared. Furthermore, data models and management are utilized for defect quantification, classification, failure prediction and maintenance. Finally, the challenges, problems, and development trends of pipeline inspection as well as data management are derived and discussed.

Current Trends and Perspectives of Detection and Location for Buried Non-Metallic Pipelines

“…Therefore, current buried non-metallic pipeline detection and location technologies need to be upgraded and transformed with new technology and innovation. The research in the future is aiming at a new location method of non-metallic pipelines and achieving this for a combination of various location methods in line with other pipeline inspection and monitoring [170]. The research and development trends for non-metallic pipeline detection and location can be foreseen according to the previous analysis, as summarized in the following.…”

Magnetic Recording Method (MRM) for Nondestructive Evaluation of Ferromagnetic Materials

“…If the flux encounters any geometrical inhomogeneities with significantly lower permeance, it breaks out of the material and can be registered by the magnetic sensor [1,2]. Flux leakage allows the inspector to localize and identify surface and subsurface flaws [3]. The inevitable advantages of this technique are high efficiency and no requirement for direct contact with the tested object [4,5].…”

Real‐Time Explainable Multiclass Object Detection for Quality Assessment in 2‐Dimensional Radiography Images

“…As an instance, Figure 1 shows a robotic digital X-ray photographer by Stanley Oil and Gas. e robot autonomously conducts the X-ray imaging that significantly minimizes the human intervention to prevent the operators from exposure [13]. After a robotic imaging process is done, human experts use images generated to inspect the welds.…”

“…Proposed methods are validated experimentally and have shown significant improvement in their own type of NDT and data acquisition, demonstrating the advantages of using CNN for feature extraction in NDT. While UT and thermography methods (e.g., ECPT) are commonly used for in-line inspection and maintenance purposes and not for weld construction inspections, these methods have their limitations, such as low sensitivity to small defects or internal crack detection [13].…”