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- 2 Prozess- und Anlagensicherheit (1)
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- 3 Gefahrgutumschließungen; Energiespeicher (1)
- 3.2 Gefahrguttanks und Unfallmechanik (1)
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- 8.1 Sensorik, mess- und prüftechnische Verfahren (1)
- 8.4 Akustische und elektromagnetische Verfahren (1)
- 8.6 Faseroptische Sensorik (1)
- 9 Komponentensicherheit (1)
- 9.6 Additive Fertigung metallischer Komponenten (1)
Pipelines and industrial piping systems are particularly relevant regarding technical safety, availability and maintenance. Large flow rates of hazardous substances imply that even smallest leakages can lead to high environmental impacts. Therefore, and to ensure the availability of infrastructure, an early detection and localization of potentially hazardous degradations to the walls (e.g. cracks, pittings, sedimentation, etc.) of the containments is necessary. However, in many cases it is not feasible to equip pipelines with a large number of point sensors at reasonable expense.
The principle of distributed fibre optic sensing relies on one single optical fibre, which simultaneously acts as a spatially continuous sensor as well as the signal transducer. Therefore, extensive structures can be provided with this type of sensor with comparatively low efforts.
As a consequence, monitoring oil and gas pipelines using distributed fibre optic sensors is on the upswing. Besides the established methods to measure temperature and strain, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has lately received considerable attention as a means to detect and localize third party threats to pipelines (approach of vehicles, digging, mechanical manipulation).
The so far not utilized potential of DAS as a means for continuous condition monitoring of pipes by detecting and localizing acoustic signals that point to certain damage scenarios, is currently under investigation in an interdisciplinary research project at BAM (AGIFAMOR, Ageing Infrastructures – Fibre Optic Monitoring of Pipes).
In order to qualify distributed acoustic fibre optic sensors for this application area, we especially focus on detecting and identifying the relevant acoustic emissions of interesting degradations as well as on the optimal way of application of the optical fibres to the specimen to achieve an optimal signal transmission of acoustic signals.
The feasibility study „AGIFAMOR. Ageing infrastructures – distributed acoustic monitoring of pipes” is an interdisciplinary research project at BAM internally financed from 2015 to 2018. Therefore, the quite young fibre optic sensing technology of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) was investigated to possibly be extended towards a global condition monitoring system for pipelines operating in real time.
DAS is a highly dynamic fibre optic sensing technology based on the method of coherent optical time domain reflectometry (C-OTDR). DAS allows capturing strain changes in the range of kHz. For the experimental work, the most suitable application yielding an optimum sensitivity was proven by wrapping a standard single-mode silica fibre around the pipe.
The DAS sensitivity was investigated regarding the detection of 1) incidents that initiate propagation of acoustic waves in the pipe wall, 2) changes inside the pipeline causing altered flow and 3) damage development in the pipe wall. Therefore, several testing setups in laboratory as well as in real scale were realized. For comparison purposes, experiments were accompanied by acoustic emission analyses and by measurements with accelerometers.
DAS was found to be very sensitive to gas ignition and its propagation across the pipe. Furthermore, the ability of DAS to detect and localize acoustic signals associated with pipeline leakage was demonstrated. The detection of crack formation and propagation within the pipe wall by means of DAS was studied during bending tests on several pipe segments, but was not proven so far with certainty. As expected, these studies turned out as the most difficult challenge due to the random occurrence and transient nature of microscopic damage phenomena.