Kavi Jonas, Halabe Udaya B
Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc., Bridgeport, WV 26330, USA.
School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Oct 14;23(20):8465. doi: 10.3390/s23208465.
Pipelines remain the safest means of transporting natural gas and petroleum products. Nonetheless, the pipeline infrastructure in the US is facing major challenges, especially in terms of corrosion of steel/metallic pipes and excavation damage of onshore pipelines (leading to oil spills, explosions, and deaths). Corrosion of metallic pipelines can be avoided by using non-corrosive materials such as plastic pipes for low-pressure applications and glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite pipes for transporting high-pressure oil and natural gas. However, buried non-metallic pipelines are not easily detectable, which can lead to increased excavation damage during construction and rehabilitation work. Alternative strategies for making buried non-metallic pipes easily locatable using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) were investigated in this study. Results from this study have shown that using carbon fabric or an aluminum foil overlay on non-metallic pipes before burying in soil significantly increases the reflected GPR signal amplitude, thereby making it easier to locate such pipelines. The reflected GPR signal amplitude for pipe sections with carbon fabric or aluminum foil overlays was found to have increased by a factor of up to 4.5 over the control samples. The results also highlight the importance of selecting the appropriate antenna frequency for GPR surveys, since wet silt loam soil and clay significantly reduce the penetration depths of the radar signals produced by the GPR antennae.
管道仍然是运输天然气和石油产品最安全的方式。尽管如此，美国的管道基础设施正面临重大挑战，特别是在钢/金属管道的腐蚀以及陆上管道的挖掘损坏方面（导致石油泄漏、爆炸和人员死亡）。通过使用非腐蚀性材料，如用于低压应用的塑料管和用于输送高压石油和天然气的玻璃纤维增强聚合物（GFRP）复合管，可以避免金属管道的腐蚀。然而，埋地非金属管道不易被探测到，这可能导致在施工和修复工作期间挖掘损坏增加。本研究调查了使用探地雷达（GPR）使埋地非金属管道易于定位的替代策略。该研究结果表明，在将非金属管道埋入土壤之前，在管道上使用碳纤维布或铝箔覆盖层可显著增加探地雷达反射信号的幅度，从而更容易定位此类管道。发现带有碳纤维布或铝箔覆盖层的管段的探地雷达反射信号幅度比对照样本增加了高达4.5倍。结果还突出了为探地雷达探测选择合适天线频率的重要性，因为湿粉质壤土和粘土会显著降低探地雷达天线产生的雷达信号的穿透深度。
