Abstract
Pipe integrity is a central concern regarding technical safety, availability, and environmental compliance of industrial plants and pipelines. A condition monitoring system that detects and localizes threats in pipes prior to occurrence of actual structural failure, e.g., leakages, especially needs to target transient events such as impacts on the pipe wall or pressure waves travelling through the medium. In the present work, it is shown that fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) in conjunction with a suitable application geometry of the optical fiber sensor allows to track propagating acoustic waves in the pipeline wall on a fast time-scale. Therefore, short impacts on the pipe may be localized with high fidelity. Moreover, different acoustic modes are identified, and their respective group velocities are in good agreement with theoretical predications. In another set of experiments modeling realistic damage scenarios, we demonstrate that pressure waves following explosions of different gas mixtures in pipes can be observed. Velocities are verified by local piezoelectric pressure transducers. Due to the fully distributed nature of the fiber-optic sensing system, it is possible to record accelerated motions in detail. Therefore, in addition to detection and localization of threatening events for infrastructure monitoring, DAS may provide a powerful tool to study the development of gas explosions in pipes, e.g., investigation of deflagration-to-detonation-transitions (DDT).
Highlights
In recent years, the integrity of pipelines and piping systems in industrial plants has moved into the focus of public concern as the global piping infrastructure grows and ages
The principle of distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) [1,2] has come into focus for this kind of application as it relies on one single optical fiber applied to the structure under question, which simultaneously acts as a spatially continuous sensor as well as the signal transducer
While the results for scenarios 2 [27] and 3 [26] are described elsewhere, the current study focuses on the early recognition of potentially threatening events according to scenario 1 in the undamaged pipe before occurrence of structural failure
Summary
The integrity of pipelines and piping systems in industrial plants has moved into the focus of public concern as the global piping infrastructure grows and ages. To meet increasingly higher standards in technical safety, environmental compliance and failsafe performance the demand for a holistic pipe monitoring system are expected to rise even further in the future. Such a system should ideally be able to detect, classify, and localize a wide range of different threatening pipe conditions prior to the occurrence of leakages over the whole length of the pipeline and in real time. Since piping systems in industrial plants typically are highly branched and stretch over long distances the use of conventional point sensors is usually not practicably feasible to realize a monitoring system without gap.
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