Active monitoring of pipeline tapered thread connection based on time reversal using piezoceramic transducers

Abstract

The monitoring of structural integrity of pipeline tapered thread connections is of great significance in terms of safe operation in the industry. In order to detect effectively the loosening degree of tapered thread connection, an active sensing method using piezoceramic transducers was developed based on time reversal technique in this paper. As the piezoeramic transducers can be either as actuators or sensors to generate or detect stress waves, the energy transmission for tapered thread connection was analyzed. Subsequently, the detection principle for tapered thread connection based on time reversal was introduced. Finally, the inherent relationship between the contact area and tightness degree of tapered thread connection for the pipe structural model was investigated. Seven different contact area scenarios were tested. Each scenario was created by loosening connectors ranging from 3 turns to 4.5 turns in the right tapered threads when the contact area in the left tapered threads were 4.5 turns. The experiments were separately conducted with a highly noisy environment and various excitation signal amplitudes. The results show the focused peaks based on time reversal have the monotonously rising trend with the increase of the contact areas of tapered threads within an acceptable monitoring resolution for metal pipes. Compared with the energy method, the proposed time reversal based method to monitor tapered threads loosening demonstrates to be more robust in rejecting noise in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications.