Graduation Semester and Year

2018

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Ali Abolmaali

Second Advisor

Sharareh Kermanshachi

Abstract

This study investigates the performance of all the current large-diameter pipeline system of The City of Arlington (COA) sewer lines of 48 miles (24-inch inner diameter and above for rigid and flexible pipes). Proper inspection and rehabilitation plan for the city sewer pipeline system are better choice for the municipality and tax payers in terms of cost than dealing with pipe damage and collapsing problems when they happen. The City of Arlington (COA), University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and RedZone Robotics have established a Technology Partnership Program (TPP) to perform a condition assessment on the all COA large diameter sewers using advanced multi-sensor inspection (MSI) technology. The MSI Equipment has multi-sensor technology including Digital CCTV, Sonar, Laser sensors. As an essential part of the agreement in the TPP Program, a pipe assessment software is developed for this study by UTA team to obtain information about the sewer pipes condition from laser and sonar profiles beyond conventional pipe visual inspection. The developed software is found to be capable of calculating the debris level, deposit level, blockage level, corrosion level, sewer water level, pipe ovality as well as combining the laser and the sonar profiles and evaluate the condition of the sewer pipelines. Furthermore, a visual inspection is performed along with the laser and sonar inspection to identifies all other defects in the pipes that couldn’t be detected using MSI technology such as fractures and roots intrusion. All the field inspection is already done for all the city by UTA and COA teams and approximately 6 miles of the COA large diameter pipes have been analyzed by UTA team. Finally, statistical models are developed for Identification of the probability of the pipe damage such as the corrosion level in ductile iron pipes and PACP structural defect score in vitrified clay pipes using few parameters such as pipe age, pipe diameter, pipe slope, pipe average flow depth and pipe average flow velocity.

Keywords

Sewer pipe inspection, Sewer pipe performance evaluation, MSI technology, NDE method

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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