Field Investigation on Casing Pipe Damage for Pumping Well Pipelines using Optical Fiber Sensors

Abstract

Large field investigations and theoretical studies show that casing damage is closely related to seepage field change. Therefore it is significant to monitor a pipeline's stress state and evaluate the safety of its casing pipe. To date, no cost-effective and reliable sensor exists for long-term monitoring and evaluation of casing, and no satisfactory sensor installation technique has yet been developed. Further, traditional casing inspection techniques cannot provide a real-time monitoring and warning system for casing damage. This paper provides a technique for real-time monitoring of casing safety based on an optical fiber sensing technique. This approach combines a distributed Brillouin sensing technique for distributed strain measurement and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing technique for local high-precision strain measurements. This work developed along smart fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) rebar containing an embedded optical fiber with no solder joint to measure the distributed strain of the casing pipe, and it investigated the sensor installation techniques. The results of field experiments show that both the FBG sensors wrapped in epoxy resin and glass cloth and smart FRP rebar can survive the casing down hole, withstand a harsh service environment, and deform with the casing pipe. The FBG strain sensors effectively reveal the strain state for the hot spot of casing pipe at each warning stage, and the optical fiber in FRP provides full information on strain distribution in the casing pipe. The maximum relative variance of strain between the FRP rebar and the FBG strain sensor was about 10%.

Meeting Name

Nondestructive Characterization for Composite Materials, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Infrastructure, and Homeland Security (2010: Mar. 7-11, San Diego, CA)

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2010 SPIE, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Mar 2010

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