Design, Construction, and Testing of an Autonomous External Pipeline Inspection Robot
Grant
Overview
Affiliation
View All
Overview
abstract
In this interdisciplinary project, we propose the design and manufacture of a novel autonomous out-pipe defects MFL based robot with variable number and positions of Hall Effect Sensorsâ (HES) . The robot will be used for the purpose of health monitoring and defect detection of external oil and gas pipelines. The robot will be equipped with a data acquisition system capable of wirelessly relaying information gathered by the various sensors to a personal computer. The proposed robot design has the following features: 1. Detection of cracks, corrosion, pitting, and wall thinning. 2. Capability of autonomous scanning. 3. Adaptation to different pipe sizes and capability to measure multiple outer diameters. The focus of this project is on the novelty of the mechanical design of the robot, accuracy of the measurement and control systems, and workability of the prototype. The proposed design will provide an innovative, effective, economical, and easy to install solution to the oil and gas industry which spends millions of dollars on pipeline failures and lost production time. Therefore, accurate and efficient pipe inspection is extremely important to the oil and gas industry.
