A probe for in situ, remote, detection of defects in buried plastic natural gas pipelines.

Several techniques are available to determine the integrity of in situ metal pipeline but very little is available in the literature to determine the integrity of plastic pipelines. Since the decade of the 1970s much of the newly installed gas distribution and transmission lines in the United States are fabricated from polyethylene or other plastic. A probe has been developed to determine the in situ integrity of plastic natural gas pipelines that can be installed on a traversing mechanism (pig) to detect abnormalities in the walls of the plastic natural gas pipeline from the interior.