Pipe infrastructure management is a dire responsibility to many public and private utility service enablers in various industries, including oil, chemical, gas, water, wastewater etc. Conventional pipe management efforts are being replaced with smart pipe materials and digital technologies for pipe maintenance that completely reform the new age’s pipe infrastructure management efforts. The criticality of pipe leakages is becoming more severe with the exuberant rise of populations; owning companies and governments are prioritising leakage detection technologies and anti-customer-disruption measures to ensure that pipe hazards do not affect the quality of utility services. This leads to dynamic policies and regulations that change overnight, which is stressful for pipe maintenance service providers. This is why pipe-oriented organisations should be aware of the latest pipe maintenance technologies in vogue.
This article investigates smart materials and digital technologies that allow pipe managers to:
- Control pipe operational and maintenance costs
- Enhance pipe lifecycle
- Ensure water quality and safety
- Leverage the power of smart pipe materials
- Monitor pipe degradation behaviours
- Predict and detect pipe damages
- Protect the environment and community peace
10 Most Common Pipe Conundrums
Most pipe experts are pushed into a critical landmark because they are limited with information about the severity of pipe failures, the precise location of congestions and prescribing the most suitable and safe techniques to maintain particular pipes without facing certain disasters. The prevailing pipe maintenance efforts are expensive, disrupt the environment and take an abundance of time. Therefore, routine-based time evaluation wastes a lot of time, money and effort of pipe specialists because not all pipes degrade or damage uniformly. Here are some of the most common pipe challenges faced by pipe operators who rely on conventional pipe maintenance efforts.
- Clearly analysing the safety concerns of pipe operators, contractors and the general public at large
- Cutting down the annoyance and disruption that impacts the peace of neighbouring homeowners, offices and public
- Ensuring there is no chance of contamination or water quality threats
- Expanding the pipe asset lifecycle with less risk and costs
- Investigating ways to optimise the working ground pits
- Making sure the reinstatement process of the pipe’s property is a fast procedure
- Mitigating the utility strike risks by delivering pipe maintenance services agilely, smartly and efficiently
- Precisely mapping out the scope of the pipe issue
- Recuperating or salvaging old pipework
- Setting a prolonged time aside for the pipe repairs that can take up to a few hours or days
Digital Solutions for Pipe Management
Critical pipe structures can be digitally developed into virtual models that mirror the exact behaviours of hard-to-reach pipe assets. 4D digital twin models will allow pipe operators to remotely access pipe profiles and manipulate virtual models based on different events to study their response to dynamic environmental conditions. This cutting-edge visual tool becomes the lens between the decision-makers and the asset conditions to presuppose how, when, and why a pipe will fail and what should be done to prevent it from falling in the future.
Industry 4.0 digital technologies allow pipe operators to understand the most sensitive pipe behaviours and install IoT-driven sensors across the pipe network. This helps the pipe decision-makers to detect the water flow rates of pipes regularly. The change in flow rates will automatically trigger alarms of pipe failure. For example, suppose the pipe flow rate drops from 50 litres/min to 30 litres/min in a matter of 15 minutes. In that case, the IoT sensor system will identify the abnormal water flow rate and alert the respective parties of pipe failures.
AI-driven advanced analytical models are developed by predictive and prescriptive algorithms that automatically determine pipe conditions based on data-driven from a myriad of data sources. This technology has the power to gather all pipe information like pipe material, weather changes, soil densities, pipe impact, pipe degradation rates and other pipe-centric details to a centralised point to figure out the pipe life cycle at an earlier stage. This helps the pipe decision-makers to tag pipes based on their conditional and operational changes and maintain pipes in a smart, agile and failure-proof manner.
Satellite and GIS maps can be one of the best industry 4.0 combos to detect underground pipe failures by detecting the soil deformation of pipe footprints. Radar satellite data can be used to monitor ground movements using cell or pixel-based EO imagery; it can monitor dynamic pipe failures to create a replacement prioritisation map using ArcGIS layers. This map can be the single source of truth to help underground pipe managers determine how to dispatch risk mitigation and pipe maintenance teams based on IoT-driven pipe condition data, AI analytics and the movement data gathered from satellite technologies.
Cerexio Asset Suite for Seamless Pipe Services
Cerexio’s Smart Infrastructure Asset Suite presents three industry 4.0 solutions that can help pipe engineers, operators and maintenance crews in unravelling all pipe limitations, real-time and predicted conditions, risks and budget caps efficiently. Cerexio Digital Twin System, Total Investment System and Predictive Maintenance allows water, gas, oil, wastewater and other pipe-oriented asset managers to have a comprehensive lookout for pipe parameters under a single multifaceted screen.
Cerexio’s technology package allows pipe stakeholders to make data-driven decisions with real-time and event-driven insights into extreme pipe scenarios. Connect with Cerexio to learn how your pipe systems will no longer be susceptible to unprecedented failures like pipe corrosion, clogs, wear, fatigue, degradations, leaks, galvanic failures, insulation flaws, deposits, weathering damages etc.
Overcome The Limitations of Conventional Pipe Management Today
The modern age is moving forward towards an industrial transition, where industrial practitioners keep a sturdy reliance on digital technologies. Pipe congestions, failures, and degradation causes a thread of inconveniences to the environments, neighbourhoods and the operators. Furthermore, these pipe events lead to plummeting expenditures for asset managers with tight budgets. This is why understanding how industry 4.0 can help in optimising pipe management efforts becomes important in the new age.
Most industrial pipe leaders are leveraging the power of industry 4.0 technology to increase yield with lessors risks and costs; is your pipe management team given this technological advantage; if not, how will it affect your future?
