Techniques for Damage Detection, Location and Assessment in Pipelines

Third party damage to petroleum pipelines can be catastrophic if undetected. This damage results in financial losses, environmental pollution and frequent loss of life as a result of explosion. Therefore damage detection and location methods will play a key role in the overall integrity management of a pipeline system. This book presents the development and testing of mathematical techniques for locating an impulsive event on a pipeline and reconstructing the pressure pulse caused by it from measurements made remotely. When an impulsive event occurs along a pipeline, the pressure pulse propagates in both directions and can be detected and measured by sensors located at different positions along the pipeline. From these measurements the location of the event can be determined and its form reconstructed. Techniques for reconstructing the pulse at it source from the distorted pulses measured were developed using deconvolution theory and inverse methods. This theoretical work was validated by experiments using a simulated pipeline.