Flaw Location of Pipeline based on the Accelerometer

Abstract

The pipeline is the most economic and effective means to transport large quantities of oil and natural gas over long distances. However, in the long term, pipeline flaws may appear because of erosion, abrasion, unexpected damage and so on, which would weaken the pipeline safety performance and even result in leakage and pipe explosion accidents. For timely discovery of flaws and establishing optimal strategy of maintaining the pipeline, the in-served pipeline will be periodically online evaluated by using the smart PIG (pipeline inspection device) to detect flaws and locate them in the body of the pipeline. A method for flaw location of the pipeline is presented in this article, where a high resolution servo accelerometer CX-3 is used to measure the axial acceleration of the smart PIG in a pipeline to acquire the precise distance walked by the smart PIG by integral operation of the acceleration value to time variable and error correction. Basing on the linear relation between the distance and time label a flaw location precision about 0.2% can be reached by indoor experimental measurement. This experimental result shows that the location precision based on the accelerometer is higher than the Odometer wheels now in use and the technology will satisfy the pipeline inspection need by further research and development.