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Research on Searching and Positioning of Buried Underwater Pipelines

In recent years, ocean has become a place to dispose of industrial and civil waste waters. Hence, there are more and more projects to establish offshore outflow pipes. These underwater pipes should be kept monitored in order to maintain their functions specifically. The purpose of this research was to explore the two outflow pipes in Kaohsiung offshore area, i.e., Chung-chou outflow pipe and Tso-ying outflow pipe, by using an integrated surveying system which includes a side-scan sonar and a sub-bottom profiler. The ultimate objective was to investigate the feasibility of this system in searching and positioning of buried underwater pipelines.
Based on this investigation, the offshore section of Chung-chou outflow pipe is about 2.8km in length and extends offshore to the direction of 38o from the west to the south. The water depth at the end of this pipe is about 21m. Among the 2.24km section initiated at the offshore end of the pipe, the buried depths are between 2.2m and 3.2m. There are two disposed gravel zones around the offshore end of the pipe. The first zone is about 130m in length and 10m wide. The second zone is 220m in length and 20m wide. Moreover, based on the side scan sonar images, there are 71 protective concrete blocks located around Chung-chou outflow pipe. The offshore section of Tsao-ying outflow pipe is about 4.76 km in length and extends to the direction of 20o from the west to the south. The water depth at the end of this pipe is about 17m. Among the 3.7km section initiated at the offshore end of the pipe, the buried depths are about 1.0 to 2.5m. A disposed gravel zone with dimensions of 330m in length and 10m wide is located at the end of this pipe. In addition, there are 43 protective blocks located around this outflow pipe.
This investigation, incorporated the results conducted on the other three underwater outflow pipes(i.e., Chishui creek outflow pipe, Chinese Petroleum Corporation underwater petroleum pipe off Kaohsiung Harbor and Liuchiuyu water transport pipe), concluded that as far as the buried underwater pipes that are thicker than 1m in diameter are concerned, the integrated system of side scan sonar and sub-bottom profiler provides an useful and trustful tool to get the locations and the buried depth of outflow pipes, as well as the distribution of the protective concrete blocks around these pipes. As to the pipes that are less than 20cm in diameter, the pipes can¡¦t be detected by this equipment. For the pipes that are between 20cm and 1m in diameter, due to limited information collected up to this moment, extensive investigation need to be conducted until a clear understanding can be deduced.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0203105-120632
Date03 February 2005
CreatorsHsiao, Po-yuan
Contributorsnone, none, none, none, none
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0203105-120632
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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