Non-Invasive and Remote Pipeline Rehabilitation Technology Using Reactive and Magnetic Particles

摘要

We propose a novel pipeline rehabilitation technique that uses particles of a reactive, multi-layer metallic foil to repair internal cracks of a pipeline with minimum on-site effort and no downtime. The principle of this repair technique is as follows: when cracks are detected during routine pipeline maintenance, the particles are introduced into the fluid flow in the pipe, then manipulated by an external magnetic field to fill the cracks or pits. Once the particles are in the site of interest, induction heating is externally applied, causing the reactive metallic foil to undergo an exothermic diffusion reaction and sintering the particles in the crack. In this paper, we experimentally confirm the feasibility of such a reaction within a pipe repair system. We investigate the reaction and bonding strength for various simulated crack sizes, particle sizes, and particle mixture compositions. We observed stable reaction propagation in 30 mm long, 100 μm diameter glass capillaries at velocities of 80-100 mm/s. Shear tests were also performed on the reacted particles. A maximum shear stress of 3 MPa was applied between sintered particles and a simulated crack in carbon steel, demonstrating the ability of reactive particles to repair small pipe cracks.