NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Riding the Stress Wave: Integrated Monitoring, Communications, and Networking for Subsea Infrastructure

数千英里的管道纵横交错在墨西哥湾海底，是美国和世界海上石油和天然气工业的静脉。这些管道的泄漏和破裂不仅会造成巨大的经济损失，还会造成环境灾难。该项目的目标是有效监测海上管道等海底基础设施，并有效地提供感知信息，以便后续控制和行动。为了提供可行的解决方案，该项目将集成压电换能器设计、声学通信、应力波通信（SWC）和混合网络，并进行实验和现场测试以验证所提出的设计。实现这一愿景需要工程和科学两方面的努力，而拟议的变革性研究的成功将显著改善海底基础设施监测和数据传输系统的设计、分析和实施。该研究成果将为未来的海底物联网和海洋大数据系统做出贡献，并对海上油气工业、污染控制、海洋农业、灾难救援等产生影响。该项目还将通过研究工作和有关课程，为多个机构的研究生和本科生，特别是妇女和少数民族学生提供特别的跨学科培训机会。该项目旨在通过五个协同推进，开发有效的海底基础设施健康监测和高效的信息传递网络设计：(1)结构健康监测，采用锆钛酸铅（PZT）传感器对管道进行综合结构健康监测，包括冲击、泄漏和损伤检测，并探索如何通过SWC发送检测到的损伤信息；(2) SWC通道建模，对海底环境下充液管道中SWC的运动进行模型分析和仿真，对复杂管网中的SWC通道进行表征；(3)自适应时反转水声通信，对海洋中80 ~ 200千赫兹高频短距离传输的水声通信信道进行表征，开发基于时反转处理的新型自适应通信接收机和策略；(4)混合型海底网络开发，根据海底基础设施开发融合传统声通信和SWC的混合型海底无线网络，多角度研究混合型海底无线网络性能；(5)综合实验验证，这将在校园和工业/学术合作者的站点进行一系列实验室和海上现场测试，以验证拟议的设计。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Thousands of miles of pipelines crisscrossing the Gulf of Mexico seafloor are the veins for the offshore oil and gas industry in the U.S. and the world. Leaks and ruptures in those pipelines lead to not only enormous economic loss but also environmental disasters. The goal of this project is to effectively monitor the subsea infrastructure such as offshore pipelines, and efficiently deliver the sensed information for subsequent control and action. To provide a viable solution, this project will integrate piezoelectric transducer designs, acoustic communications, stress wave communications (SWC), and hybrid networking, and conduct experiments and field tests to validate the proposed designs. Such a vision needs efforts from both engineering and scientific perspectives, and the success of the proposed transformative research will significantly improve the design, analysis and implementation of subsea infrastructure monitoring and data transmission systems. The research outcomes will potentially contribute to a future subsea Internet of Things and ocean big data systems, and have impact on offshore oil and gas industry, pollution control, ocean agriculture, disaster rescue, etc. The project will also provide special interdisciplinary training opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students, particularly women and minority students, across multiple institutions through both research work and related courses.This project aims to develop an effective subsea infrastructure health monitoring, and efficient information delivery network design via five synergistic thrusts: (1) structural health monitoring, which will employ Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) transducers to perform integrated structural health monitoring of pipelines, including impact, leakage, and damage detection, and explore how to send the detected damage information via SWC; (2) SWC channel modeling, which will conduct model analysis and simulation of SWC traveling along a fluid-filled pipeline in the subsea environment, and characterize SWC channels in a complicated pipeline network; (3) adaptive time reversal acoustic communications, which will characterize the acoustic communication channel in high frequency bands of 80-200 kilohertz for short range transmissions in the ocean and develop new adaptive communication receivers and strategies based on time reversal processing; (4) hybrid subsea network development, which will develop a hybrid subsea wireless network to integrate traditional acoustic communications and SWC depending on the subsea infrastructure, and study the hybrid network performance from multiple perspectives; (5) integrated experimental validation, which will conduct a series of lab and at-sea field tests on campus and at industrial/academic collaborators' sites to verify the proposed designs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.