Acoustic Emission Sensing of Pipe–Soil Interaction: Full-Scale Pipelines Subjected to Differential Ground Movements
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 145, Issue 12
Abstract
This paper presents the first full-scale demonstration of the potential use of pipe–soil interaction-generated acoustic emission (AE) for early detection of buried pipe deformation. Full-scale tests were performed at the buried infrastructure research facility at Queen’s University, Canada, using a split box apparatus to impose differential ground motion on a steel pipe buried in dry sand, and to investigate the influence of stress level and patterns of deformation on AE generation. The pipe was instrumented with AE sensors, strain gauges, fiber optic strain sensing, and linear potentiometers, and surface deformation was measured using an automatic total station. AE measurements were used to interpret the evolution of the pipe–soil interaction behavior. AE activity correlated strongly ( from 0.83 to 0.99) with both the rate and magnitude of pipe deformation at different burial depths, and quantified relationships are presented that enable interpretation of pipe–soil interaction behavior from AE measurements.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request (displacement, strain, and acoustic emission measurements).
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the excellent assistance in performing the split box experiments provided by Graeme Boyd, Josh Coghlan, Brian Westervelt, Haitao Lan, Pengpeng Ni, Hendrik Williams, Anderson de Olivera, and Gregor Browning. Alister Smith gratefully acknowledges the support of a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Fellowship (Listening to Infrastructure, EP/P012493/1). The testing at Queen’s was supported with funds to Ian Moore through a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Infrastructure Operating Funds from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
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©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 29, 2018
Accepted: Aug 8, 2019
Published online: Sep 30, 2019
Published in print: Dec 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Feb 29, 2020
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