Sonic assessment of physical ageing of plastic pipes

This article explores the potential of vibro-acoustics to detect physical ageing of plastic pipes. For this purpose, two different topics are combined: the ability of vibro-acoustics to estimate the storage modulus of a plastic pipe, and the sensitivity of the estimated storage modulus to changes due to ageing. Concerning the first topic, a vibro-acoustic method was applied to two water-filled HDPE pipes, one surrounded by air and another by sand. The excitation was achieved via an impact hammer and the propagating signal was recorded with the aid of hydrophones. Signal analysis led to the estimation of the axial wavenumber of the propagating axisymmetric fluid-borne wave. This value was used in the dispersion equation for the propagating mode to evaluate the storage modulus of the pipe material for a given experimental setup. Results revealed that the vibro-acoustic method gives consistent and reliable estimations of the storage modulus. Concerning the second topic, samples from two PVC pipes with an age difference of 41 years were subjected to dynamic mechanical analysis to study the behaviour of the storage modulus as a function of frequency. Results showed that it is feasible to distinguish discrepancies in the magnitude of the storage modulus due to ageing, provided that the measurement uncertainty is small. The uncertainty analysis highlighted the parameters that need to be more accurately known in order to lower the overall uncertainty of the estimated storage modulus when the proposed vibro-acoustic method is used. Irrespectively of the medium surrounding the pipe (air or soil), the distance between the points of the recording signals should be sufficiently long to measure the signal phase accurately. It was found that the accurate knowledge of the pipe’s geometry, i.e. the wall thickness and internal radius, was more or equally important for controlling the overall uncertainty than that of the parameters of surrounding soil.