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Energy related utilities like fuel, gas or oil supply lines and power generation sources such as nuclear and thermal power plants require an extensive network of pipelines for various transportation purposes. These networks are in fact quite vast for any industrially developed country. Transportation of Natural Gas by pipe-lines is rapidly increasing in developing countries like India. The extent of Gas pipe-lines in India extracted from the International Energy Agency Report of 2010 states that currently, India has about 11000 km of Gas-pipe lines. These pipelines, however, have limited life due to various types of static and dynamic loads originated from both inside and outside the pipe; as well as, due to natural processes of degradation such as oxidation and corrosion of the pipe-surface, and joint failures due to abrasion.
The concept of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)1 is immensely applicable in these fields to improve the lifespan of the pipelines and prevent catastrophic failures. As it is nearly impossible to equip the entire pipeline with distributed array of sensors, a better strategy that has been envisaged is to monitor the condition of the inner surface of the pipe with the help of a surveillance robot. With the advent of sensors and actuators, fully autonomous robots based on various motion generation systems and integrated with multiple sensors are being developed today. Some of these robots travel hundreds of kilometres inside the pipelines to record the surface condition and location of damages. The operation and management of the oil and gas pipe-lines takes up the major part of the expenses (more than 50%) in the transmission of oil and gas transport. Hence, a considerable research funding is allocated worldwide to find newer and cheaper ways of monitoring the pipe-lines to ensure safety and high performance of the system.
This project is sponsored by the Gas Authority of India Limited in cooperation with Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur to develop an intelligent pipe health monitoring robot using a three sensor system based on opto-electronic sensors, magnetic flux sensors and piezoelectric touch sensors. The robot designed is capable of travelling in underground pipelines and assessing the pipeline health for a stretch of 100 km at a time.
Pipe Health Monitoring System is the first prototype of pipe crawling robot developed with an intention to detect defects like corrosion, cracks, pitting and pipe undulations etc., for Gas Authority of India Limited.
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