Use of Fibre-Optic Sensors for Pipe Condition and Hydraulics Measurements: A Review

Abstract

The combined length of the sewerage and clean water pipe infrastructure in the UK is estimated to be about 800,000 km. It is prone to failure due to its age and the inadequacies of the current pipe inspection methods. Fibre-optic cable sensing is an attractive way to continuously monitor this infrastructure to detect critical changes. This paper reviews the existing fibre-optic sensor (FOS) technologies to suggest that these technologies have better sensing potential than traditional inspection and performance monitoring methods. This review also discusses the requirements for retrofitting an existing pipeline with an FOS. It also demonstrates that there is a need for further research into methods applicable to non-pressurised pipelines, as there is very little existing literature that focuses on partially filled pipes and pipes with gravity fed flows.

Autonomous control for miniaturized mobile robots in unknown pipe networks

“…The proposed controller has overcome critical challenges caused by the design trade-offs and sacrifices required to keep the robot small (discussed in section 2.3 ) and controlled the robot stably, autonomously fulfilling Task 1 ( Section 2.2 ): to control the robot movement autonomously in sewer pipes, exhaustively explore a real pipe network in laboratory settings, and avoid obstacles. In this way, the proposed control architecture separates mobility, stability and navigational tasks (all of which can be implemented with only low-cost components and low power consumption) from localization, mapping and pipe inspection tasks (that may require additional, possibly more power-hungry sensors ( Worley et al, 2020 ; Aitken et al, 2021 ; Yu et al, 2021a ; Yu et al, 2021b ; Prisutova et al, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2022 )). An example of a hybrid experiment is presented by Li et al ( Li et al, 2022 ) in this issue.…”

The Application of High-Resolution, Embedded Fibre Optic (FO) Sensing for Large-Diameter Composite Steel/Plastic Pipeline Performance under Dynamic Transport Loads

“…Over the past decade, distributed optical fibre sensing (DOFS)-based strain measurement systems have become popular for the monitoring and evaluation of infrastructure condition, health, performance and maintenance applications. In the civil engineering sector, modern advances in computational modelling, autonomous data processing techniques and remote monitoring have expanded DOFS use to bridges [ 1 , 2 ], foundations and piles [ 3 , 4 ], pipelines [ 5 , 6 ] and tunnels [ 7 , 8 ]. An extensive review of fibre optic sensing and its application to civil engineering and geotechnical problems can be found in [ 9 ] and [ 10 ] but it is important to summarise the key practical requirements of any FO-based monitoring technology, particularly with regard to buried infrastructure and, specifically, large-scale drainage and stormwater pipelines.…”

Experimental Investigations of Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors for Water Pipeline Monitoring

“…In the first case, DFOS cable can be simply positioned in a loose layout, that is, without mechanical bonding [25]. When the fluid transported escapes from the pipeline, it changes the local soil temperature, and this variation is enough to be detected by DFOS [26]. Pipeline dislocation, instead, is perceivable by bonding three DFOS cables displaced by 120 • around the circumference of the pipeline [27].…”