Construction Monitoring of a Municipal Gas Pipeline during Horizontal Directional Drilling

Abstract

Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is an important technology for the placement of municipal pipelines, including water and sewer lines. This paper describes the in situ monitoring of the installation of a gas pipeline during HDD construction by using a gyroscope position-detection system and fiber optic sensing technique. The three dimensional (3D) spatial coordinates of the overall pipeline have been measured, allowing calculation of the product pipe strains and corresponding axial forces and moments during the installation. The results verify that the longitudinal strains and the section moments are sharply increased as the pipe traverses the bore path, with a simultaneous bend in the horizontal and vertical planes. The recorded data is available for the further theoretical analysis, as desired, and the monitoring strategy can be adopted for other similar projects.