Ricerc@Sapienza

Events like earthquakes, landslides, tsunami and other important occurrences, related to human activities could affect heavily the security of the pipeline constructions. Pipeline used for transportation of gas, petroleum and other hydrocarbons could become dangerous for three main problems that can occur during the operation process:1-Explosions related to malfunction of the system itself; 2-defects of the utilized material; 3-Robbery and sabotage operations. In order to prevent these events, the technology needs to step up in the mitigation direction, introducing new systems capable to understand rapidly what is happening in the territory. Those circumstances could constitute a serious and unexpected occurrence, that could afflict a big mass of people in relatively quick time and with catastrophic consequences. Our research group, during these years, has been studying various FBG monitoring systems, for preventing and monitoring among other things these criticalities. The main advantages in using those fibre optic based systems are: high corrosion resistance, no electromagnetic interference, multiplexing capabilities and no need of re-calibration during the years. This paper presents a review of the activities in Sapienza University performed by the Department DICMA and the School of Aerospace Engineering research teams for designing and testing FBG-based vibration sensors that can be used for detecting damaging or illegal activities on pipelines and also for structural monitoring of high pressure pipes.