Quantification and localization of internal pipe damage

•A quantitative method for assessing and locating internal pipe damage is proposed.•The method relies on the natural filtering of the reflected torsional wave.•A damage of half the wall thickness reduces the reference reflection with 20%.•Scattering of the damage itself increases with 10% and so reveals its location.

Internal pipeline defects are detectable and locatable from guided acoustic wave reflections using sensors mounted on the outer wall of a pipe. We demonstrate pipeline integrity monitoring with only two single acoustic sensors. Multi-mode dispersion imaging of shear displacement shows that the pure torsional mode is the only wave that survives axisymmetric pipe reflection. A reduction of 20% of the reference reflection is measured for a damage of half the wall thickness. This natural filtering is used to quantify and locate internal pipe damage.

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