Development of inspection gauge system for gas pipeline

An autonomous pipeline inspection gauge system has been developed for determining position, orientation, curvature, and deformations such as dents and wrinkles of operating pipelines by Korea Gas Company and Seoul National University. The most important part of several subsystems is the Strapdown Inertial Measurement Unit (SIMU), which is integrated with velocity and distance sensors, weld detection system, and digital recording device. The Geometry Pipeline Inspection Gauge (GeoPIG) is designed to operate continuously and autonomously for a week or longer in operating gas pipelines. In this paper, the design concepts, system integration, and data processing/analysis method for the PIG will be presented. Results from the recent experiment for a 58 kilometer gas pipeline will be discussed.