A novel defect identification design of gas pipeline based on inverse heat conduction problem

An adaptive regularized conjugate gradient inversion method (ARCGM) for defect identification of natural gas pipelines is proposed in this paper. A three-dimensional unsteady model of natural gas pipeline is established, and its thermal conduction process and surface distribution are studied by finite element analysis. According to the temperature distribution data of the outer surface of the pipeline, the internal defects of the pipeline are identified by inversion. In the experimental simulation part, the feasibility and applicability of the algorithm are verified in the case of different temperature measurement errors, number of measuring points, initial guess values and types of defects. The simulation results show that ARCGM could effectively suppress the influence of temperature measurement errors and improve the accuracy of identifying natural gas pipeline defects.