A New Robot-Based System for In-Pipe Ultrasonic Inspection of Pressure Pipelines

As pressure pipelines are usually mounted overhead or buried underground, the in-pipe inspection equipment that can run through inside pipelines is strongly demanded. Currently, the application of robotic systems for pressure pipelines in-pipe inspection is considered as one of the most attractive solutions available. Therefore, a new robot-based system for pressure pipelines in-pipe inspection was developed. A new defect detection method for pressure pipes was presented based on ultrasonic phased array technique. The developed system mainly included three parts: a tracked mobile robot for providing the driving force of the system movement, a camera used to photograph the inner surface videos or photos inside pipelines and an ultrasonic phased array module for defects detection. The structure characteristics of water/steel interface was investigated, as well as the focusing performance of convex phased array. The detection parameters such as elements size and dynamic apertures were studied and optimized with CIVA simulations. The in-pipe inspection experiments in pressure pipelines with an outer diameter of 219 mm were also carried out. The results show that the robot-based system could successfully go through inside the pressure pipelines and the ultrasonic phased array technique could implement inner surface scanning and defect detecting, which indicates that the new defect detection method can improve the pressure pipelines inspection effect.