Damage detection and localization in pipelines under non stationary environment variation using sparse estimation of monitoring signals

Abstract

International audienceThis paper suggests a method for damage detection and localization in pipelines. It was proposed to address the problem of the effects of environmental and operational conditions on the monitoring signals. It consists of establishing a model on demand of the reference state of the structure whenever a new measured signal is presented. This model is constructed by calculating sparse estimation of the actual signal. In this case, damage detection is accomplished by using the estimation error as a damage index. To localize the damage, the idea is to calculate the estimation error only on a sliding window over the signal from the damaged pipeline. The proposed method is evaluated on a pipeline segment placed in a facility where the temperature is the only environmental factor that varies during the monitoring period. Damage was created at the end of the monitoring period by removing material from the inside of the pipeline in order to simulate corrosion. Results have shown that the damage was detected successfully and localized with a minor error