This award (NEESR Payload) is an outcome of the NSF 09-524 program solicitation ''George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Research (NEESR)'' competition and includes the Princeton University (lead institution of this NEESR Payload project) and University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (lead institution of NEESR Award CMMI-0724022 that will accommodate this NEESR Payload). This project will utilize the NEES equipment site at the Cornell University. Close collaboration will be realized with other partners of the NEESR Award CMMI-0724022, Merrimack College and Purdue University.
Natural disasters, in particular earthquakes, can cause damage to pipelines which transport life- and society-sustaining supplies, such as water or hydrocarbons. Earthquake damage to pipelines can have disastrous humanitarian, social, economic, and ecologic consequences. Consequently, real-time, and automatic or on-demand assessment of damage to pipelines after the earthquake is essential for early emergency response, efficient preparation of rescue plans, and mitigation of the disastrous consequences. Assessment is particularly challenging for buried pipelines.
A method for real-time, automatic or on-demand, assessment of health condition of buried pipelines after the earthquake will be developed in this Payload project. The focus will be on damage detection and localization generated by earthquake induced ground displacement. The method will be based on the use of distributed fiber-optic sensing technology and will be applicable to both concrete and steel pipelines. A distributed fiber-optic sensor can be represented by a single several-kilometer long cable that is sensitive at every point along its length. Hence, one distributed sensor can replace thousands of traditional point sensors, and is less difficult and more economical to install and operate. Both, strain (deformation) and temperature will be monitored: strain (deformation) because the earthquake induced ground displacement actually strains (deforms) the pipe, while temperature sensing is proposed since the damage of a pipeline is often correlated with leakage of transported material that can be indirectly detected as a change of thermal parameters in the surrounding soil. Besides the assessment of damage, the method can be used for long-term structural health monitoring and operational monitoring, which will serve as an important input for lifetime maintenance activities.
The proposed method will help mitigate disastrous consequences of the earthquake-induced damage to pipelines, but it will also help lifetime maintenance activities of pipelines through structural health monitoring and operational monitoring. This will have a direct broad impact on society through an increase in safety for the human population and goods, the containment of economical losses for industry and users, and the preservation of the environment.
Broadened participation will be achieved through teamwork with other NEESR award partners, and in particular with Merrimack College, MA, which is a non-PhD-granting institution. The outcomes of the project will be included in Princeton University courses at both the undergraduate level (structural analysis course) and graduate level (structural health monitoring course). Results of the project will be disseminated by the Principal Investigator at Princeton University and jointly with partners of NEESR Award CMMI-0724022 to relevant industries, practitioners, and the broader public in the form of newsletters, website pages, papers published in scientific journals and professional magazines, documents, posters, and presentations via web-seminars (webinars). The project necessitates research in several disciplines and consequently, a multi-disciplinary collaboration will be established and the project will be presented in multi-disciplinary workshops and conferences at the national and international level.
Data from this project will be archived and made available to the public through the NEES data repository.
