An evaluation of acoustic emissions (AE) monitoring was conducted on a 5,450-foot long segment of 26-inch diameter pipe in Dutch John, Utah. Various types of defects were artificially induced in the pipeline to determine if AE monitoring could locate these defects with transducers spaced 500 feet apart. A secondary objective of the study was to develop a standard test method for AE field inspection of gas and liquid pipelines. The results show that AE monitoring can locate severe longitudinal defects at pressures as low as 30% to 50% of the failure pressures (for some types of defects). AE monitoring...
An evaluation of acoustic emissions (AE) monitoring was conducted on a 5,450-foot long segment of 26-inch diameter pipe in Dutch John, Utah. Various types of defects were artificially induced in the pipeline to determine if AE monitoring could locate these defects with transducers spaced 500 feet apart. A secondary objective of the study was to develop a standard test method for AE field inspection of gas and liquid pipelines. The results show that AE monitoring can locate severe longitudinal defects at pressures as low as 30% to 50% of the failure pressures (for some types of defects). AE monitoring was not effective for locating circumferential defects subjected to loading from internal pressure.