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

纵贯墨西哥湾海底的数千英里长的管道是美国和世界近海石油和天然气行业的血脉。这些管道的泄漏和破裂不仅造成了巨大的经济损失，而且还造成了环境灾难。该项目的目标是有效地监测海底基础设施，如海上管道，并有效地提供监测到的信息，以便随后的控制和行动。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拟议的设计。这一愿景需要从工程和科学两个角度作出努力，拟议的变革性研究的成功将大大改进海底基础设施监测和数据传输系统的设计、分析和实施。研究成果可能有助于未来的海底物联网和海洋大数据系统，并对近海油气工业、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相关课程，为多个机构的研究生和本科生，特别是女性和少数族裔学生提供专门的跨学科培训机会。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输网络设计：(1)结构健康监测，将采用钛酸铅(PZT)传感器对管道进行综合结构健康监测，包括撞击、泄漏和损伤检测，并探讨了如何通过SWC发送检测到的损伤信息；(2)SWC信道建模，它将对SWC在海底环境中沿充满流体的管道传播进行模型分析和仿真，并描述复杂管网中的SWC信道；(3)自适应时间反转水声通信，它将表征海洋中80-200千赫兹高频段的水声通信信道，并开发基于时间反转处理的新的自适应通信接收机和策略；(4)混合海底网络开发，它将开发一个混合海底无线网络，将传统的水声通信和SWC结合在一起，依赖于海底基础设施，从多个角度研究混合网络的性能；(5)综合实验验证，将在校园和工业/学术合作者现场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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.