A Live Test-Bed For The Advancement Of Condition Assessment And Failure Prediction Research On Critical Pipes

CATEGORY: PIPES & PIPELINES
This publication is an outcome from the Advanced Condition Assessment and Pipe Failure Prediction Project funded by Sydney Water Corporation, Water Research Foundation of the USA, Melbourne Water, Water Corporation (WA), UK Water Industry Research Ltd, South Australia Water Corporation, South East Water, Hunter Water Corporation, City West Water, Monash University, University of Technology Sydney and University of Newcastle. The research partners are Monash University (lead), University of Technology Sydney and University of Newcastle.
A Live Test-Bed For The Advancement Of Condition Assessment And Failure Prediction Research On Critical Pipes
Jaime Valls Miro*, Jeya Rajalingam**, Teresa Vidal-Calleja*, Freek de Bruijn*, Roger Wood**, Dammika Vitanage**, Nalika Ulapane*, Buddhi Wijerathna* and Daoblige Su*
*Centre for Autonomous Systems, University of Technology, Sydney
Jaime.VallsMiro@uts.edu.au , Teresa.VidalCalleja@uts.edu.au , Freek.deBruijn@uts.edu.au
**Sydney Water, 1 Smith Street, Parramatta, NSW 2150
Jeya.Rajalingam@sydneywater.com.au , Roger.Wood@sydneywater.com.au , Dammika.Vitanage@sydneywater.com.au
Abstract
The prediction of a pipe’s remaining life, especially for critical water mains, is important for developing effective renewal programs to manage pipe infrastructure and reducing the incidence of catastrophic failures, which impacts communities. A better understanding of the current condition and performance of buried water mains and sewer pressure mains is an important first step to help achieve improved understanding of remaining life. This has been identified by WSAA members as a high priority for research and collaboration. Despite this, one of the key factors impacting on condition assessment is the lack of data on large pipes. This is not only an issue for Sydney Water and other Australian water utilities, it is an international challenge.
An experimental test-bed has been established as part of a larger collaborative research team of Australian and international researchers and a consortium of national and international agencies to improve the technological and financial management of buried water mains. To this end, the test-bed is being used for parallel research activities to deliver essential knowledge and guidance on the cause/effect of failure and for corrosion modelling.
The test bed will address a number of knowledge gaps by generating data under controlled conditions. A verification method based on high-resolution geometric 3D laser scans of the exhumed and grit-blasted pipes together with algorithms to extract the pipe wall thickness out of the 3D geometric models, combined with lower-resolution ultrasonic measurements, is proposed to accurately determine the actual thickness of the pipes at a large scale. The set-up has allowed different condition assessment techniques to be applied to understand how their measurements relate to the pipe condition in terms of pitting, corrosion, structure etc., and to enhance their data interpretation with novel data mining techniques. The pipe used for the test-bed is a 1.5 km long section of 600mm cement lined cast iron pipe at Strathfield, Sydney, which was decommissioned due to poor condition. Examples from a number of large pipe segments from the test-bed will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies.
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