Guided wave localization and quantification of actual corrosion damage in metallic pipelines considering environmental factors

Corrosion damage is a primary cause of pipeline failure, and guided waves are conventionally employed for non-destructive testing purposes. However, the intricacy of authentic corrosion damage and environmental factors (EFs) complicate the quantitative evaluation of corrosion damage by guided waves. In this paper, four metal pipes with different degrees of corrosion were prepared by accelerated corrosion experiments over a period of 30 days, and a guided wave localization method for pipeline corrosion damage considering EFs and a corrosion degree quantification method based on the change of guided wave velocity are proposed. These methods utilize the interaction between the propagation characteristics of guided waves and corrosion damage, while taking into account the interference caused by EFs, and reduce the influence of EFs on the localization and quantitative assessment of corrosion damage by extracting features that are sensitive to corrosion damage. The experimental findings demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method in achieving precise corrosion damage location and quantitative assessment of the degree of corrosion. The relative errors in corrosion damage location and quantitative assessment were found to be 6.28% and 9.38%, respectively. The methods provided in this paper offer new solutions for the detection of corrosion damage in metallic pipelines in real engineering.