Evaluation of ultrasonic inspection and imaging systems for concrete pipes

Accurate pipeline condition assessment is vital to developing a cost effective and sustainable buried asset management system. Maintenance and rehabilitation of pipeline systems pose a major challenge for most municipalities in North America given their budgetary constraints, demand on providing quality service, and the need for preserving their pipeline infrastructure. This paper presents the proof-of-concept for an automated buried pipeline condition assessment system that can provide additional depth perception of defects in addition to surface assessments provided by current technologies. An ultrasound acoustics-based methodology is proposed to acquire depth perception and complement 2-D crack features available from the SSET camera for inspection of concrete pipes. Experimental results show that the ultrasound immersion scanning and C-Scan Imaging provides rich data for building a reliable defect detection system. The proposed automated inspection system can lead to overcoming many limitations of the current manual inspection practice (i.e. subjecting defect rating system) and can provide a more accurate assessment of buried pipe conditions.