The influence of pipeline thickness and radius on guided wave attenuation in water-filled steel pipelines: Theoretical analysis and experimental measurement.

The influence of pipeline thickness and radius on the attenuation of guided waves in water-filled steel pipelines is investigated using theoretical analysis and experimental measurement. Attenuations of individual axisymmetric modes in unburied water-filled steel pipelines are predicted by an analytical model under different pipeline radius-thickness ratios. Model predictions indicate that attenuation of the fundamental mode increases as the ratio rises. This effect is investigated by finding the displacement variations under different ratios. Laboratory experiments were also carried out in four unburied steel pipelines with three distinctly different radius-thickness ratios using acoustic transducers to acquire signals uniformly spaced along the axis of the pipe. By applying the iterative quadratic maximum likelihood algorithm, the attenuations could be accurately estimated from the measurement data for individual modes. Experimental results show that attenuation of the fundamental axisymmetric mode is sensitive to radius-thickness ratio, but high-order modes are barely affected, agreeing with the model predictions mentioned in this paper. The characteristics of water-filled buried pipelines are also investigated using an analytical model to understand the relation between wave attenuation and the radius-thickness ratio.