The safety of the gas transmission infrastructure is one of the main concerns for infrastructure operating companies. Common gas pipelines’ tightness control is tedious and time-consuming. The development of new methods is highly desirable. This paper focuses on the applications of air-borne methods for inspections of the natural gas pipelines. The main goal of this study is to test an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), equipped with a remote sensing methane detector, for natural gas leak detection from the pipeline network. Many studies of the use of the UAV with laser detectors have been presented in the literature. These studies include experiments mainly on the artificial methane sources simulating gas leaks. This study concerns the experiments on a real leakage of natural gas from a pipeline. The vehicle at first monitored the artificial source of methane to determine conditions for further experiments. Then the experiments on the selected section of the natural gas pipelines were conducted. The measurement data, along with spatial coordinates, were collected and analyzed using machine learning methods. The analysis enabled the identification of groups of spatially correlated regions which have increased methane concentrations. Investigations on the flight altitude influence on the accuracy of measurements were also carried out. A range of between 4 m and 15 m was depicted as optimal for data collection in the natural gas pipeline inspections. However, the results from the field experiments showed that areas with increased methane concentrations are significantly more difficult to identify, though they are still noticeable. The experiments also indicate that the lower altitudes of the UAV flights should be chosen. The results showed that UAV monitoring can be used as a tool for the preliminary selection of potentially untight gas pipeline sections.
The issue of the impact of subsoil deformations on above-ground steel pipelines, especially district heating pipelines, located in mining areas in Poland was discussed. The pipelines constructed from steel pipes joined by welding and supported by slide, guide and fixed rigid supports were taken into account. Expansion joints in district heating pipelines are installed due to significant changes in their length caused by temperature changes. Subsoil deformations in mining areas cause displacements of supports and thus pipelines are subjected to additional displacements, forces and bending moments. Pipelines are protected against this impact by the use of additional expansion joints or expansion joints with an increased operating range. In the article, the way of assessing the possibility of transferring mining deformations of the subsoil by existing above-ground pipelines was presented. Evaluation of the possibility considers: a. the assessment of the technical condition of the pipelines and supports based on the conducted inventory in the field, b. the assessment of the current ability to transmit the subsoil deformations by expansion joints, c. the kinematic analysis of the pipelines, taking into account the extreme values of support displacements, resulting from predicted values of mining deformations of the subsoil, d. the static and strength analysis for selected elements or sections of the pipelines.
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