Novel vibro-acoustical technology for pipe deposition monitoring

Deposits (waxes, hydrates, etc.) change the damping properties of pipelines. The damping ratio of the pipeline increases with increments in deposit thickness. Thus, the evaluation of the damping ratio of the pipeline provides a condition monitoring of the pipeline deposits. Deposits could, be detected by monitoring the vibro-acoustical response of the pipeline while it is subjected to vibration excitation. Vibro-acoustical pipeline condition monitoring is a promising technology, but it has been little investigated. A novel vibro-acoustical technology of deposit detection in pipelines is proposed, developed, and validated through simulation. A new generic feature representation approach is used. Comparison of the proposed technology with the traditional technology based on the magnitude of the frequency response function is undertaken using simulation (by the Simulink) and Monte Carlo procedure. It is shown that the proposed technology provides an essential monitoring effectiveness gain vs. that of the technology based on the magnitude of the frequency response function. Thus, the proposed technology significantly improves the accuracy of vibro-acoustical deposit monitoring in pipelines.