Pipeline Leak Detection, Location and Repair

Abstract

Pipeline leak-sealing under the high pressure and temperature condition is the way to repair a pipeline while the equipment is in continuous work in a power plant or chemical plant. At present, most of this work is carried out by operators with carrying heavy pipeline repairing tools. However, the medium transported by the pipeline is high temperature and high pressure, even acidic or corrosive, which is dangerous to the operators. In order to solve this issue, a pipeline leak-sealing robot is designed to replace the operators to perform pipeline leak-sealing tasks. Furthermore, we design and develop a caulking actuator for the pipeline leak-sealing task and applied a deep learning method to locate the leak points on the pipeline. The experimental results demonstrate that the caulking actuator achieves good performance to repair pipeline leaks, and the accuracy of the method for locating pipeline leaks meets the demand for leak location.