UNDERGROUND PIPELINE FLAW PREDICTING METHOD Russian patent published in 2007 - IPC F17D5/02 G09B29/00 

FIELD: technical diagnostics of underground pipelines, namely predicting flaws of such pipelines by remote probing with use of aerial survey in different spectrum bands.

SUBSTANCE: method comprises steps of aerial surveying of pipelines in visible and infrared spectrum bands; decoding in infrared image heat trace of pipeline; moving heat trace axis being ground projection of pipeline axis on image of visible band for plotting map of pipeline; marking on map along axis distances corresponding to width-half of protected zone; determining and marking on visible band image boundaries of protected zone and shifting them onto infrared band image; decoding and marking on visible band image objects to which minimum admissible distances till pipelines are preset while judging such distances as potential flaw sources; inside boundaries of protected zone on images of infrared and visible bands decoding natural and technogenic potential sources of flaw occurring for which minimum admissible distances from pipelines are not preset and marking them on map; measuring on map distances from projection of pipeline axis till each potential flaw source and comparing them limit distances of influence upon pipeline received by experiments, by calculation with use of statistics data or determined according to known standards; judging potential sources from which distance till pipeline is less than admissible value as flaw sources; determining and marking on map zones of their negative influence limited by outer contour remote from source contour by limit distance; judging projections of said zones onto pipeline axis as zones of possible flaw occurring and discriminating them on map.

EFFECT: improved reliability and accuracy of predicting flaw of pipelines due to taking into account influence of additional factors, comparing and combining decoding results of surveying in different spectrum bands, using properties of aerial survey photos providing accurate region location determined by linear resolution of visible band image.

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