2017 International Conference on Robotics and Automation Sciences
Corrosion Detection in Industrial Pipes Using Guided Acoustics and Radial Basis
Function Neural Network
M. Fahad, K. Kamal, T. Zafar, R. Qayyum, S. Tariq
National University of Science and Technology
Islamabad, Pakistan
e-mail: engr.fahad.air@gmail.com,
k.kamal@ceme.nust.edu.pk,
tayyabzafar@ceme.nust.edu.pk
Abstract—Detection of corrosion in industrial pipes and tubes
is a challenging task. This paper presents an efficient and a
low-cost approach for corrosion detection and classification.
The proposed approach combines the guided acoustic waves
and Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBF-NN)
classifier. Mean, RMS, Variance, Kurtosis and Skewness are
used as distinct features for the RBFNN classifier to classify
corrosion and no corrosion state. Network is trained to reduce
the Mean Squared Error (MSE) up to 0.0074. The proposed
technique shows promising results to detect and classify
corrosion with an accuracy of 99.45%. The specificity and
sensitivity of the classifier are found to be 99.54% s and 99.6%
respectively.
Keywords-radial basis function; corrosion detection; guided
acoustic waves; artificial neural network; nondestructive testing
I. INTRODUCTION
Corrosion has always been an immense problem for
engineering community. Corrosion is a natural phenomenon
which gradually degrades the metals into its oxides and
sulphides by reacting chemically or electrochemically with
its environment. Degradation caused by corrosion in
complex engineering systems strongly affects the economic
and industrial growth of a country. According to World
Corrosion Organization (WCO) annual direct cost of
corrosion is 2.2 trillion US dollars worldwide which
accounts for over 3 percent of worldwide GDP [1].
Production loss, environmental impacts, transportation
disruptions, injuries, and fatalities are the indirect costs
associated to corrosion.
Detection of corrosion in industrial pipes and tubes is a
challenging task, as most of the piping systems have limited
access being buried underground or due to physical
limitations. External detection of corrosion can be made by
less expensive methods such as visual inspection; however,
internal corrosion detection demands highly intuitive ways.
For example, in petrochemical industry, flow of acids inside
metallic pipes can corrode pipelines at higher pace and it can
go undetected till breakdown. Numerous Non-Destructive
Testing (NDT) techniques have been proposed to detect
internal corrosion in pipes. These techniques may include
ultrasonic, acoustic emission, guided waves, eddy currents,
radiographic testing and magnetic flux leakage based
978-1-5386-3995-5/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
K. Khan
Coventry University
Coventry, UK
United Kingdom
e-mail: kashoo@engineer.com
techniques [2-3]. Kim et al. [4] developed a method for stress
corrosion monitoring in pipelines that uses eddy current
based detection of corrosion. The technique uses ploy-phase
rotating magnetic field to setup eddy currents. Remote field
region is used to make measurements of the decaying eddy
currents away from the exciter. Gloria et al. [5] developed an
internal corrosion sensor that uses magnetic flux leakage to
detect internal corrosion in pipelines. Wall of the pipe is
magnetized and when metal loss occurs due to corrosion,
magnetic flux is leaked and is sensed by proposed sensor.
Guided Acoustic waves are the sound waves that moves
along the bounded structure while following the boundaries
of that structure. The solution to the problem of Corrosion
under Insulation (CUI) was proposed by Lowe et al. [6]
through the guided waves testing. Testing scheme used the
pulse-echo arrangement of transducers which causes the
Lamb waves to follow the boundaries of the pipes up to fifty
meters. Reflection of these waves from defects in pipelines
were sensed by sensing elements and further interpretation
was required to get results.
Artificial neural network (ANN) based techniques are
also proposed by different researchers. De Masi et al. [7]
made the corrosion assessment in subsea pipelines using
machine learning based approach. A data driven artificial
neural network model was used to predict internal corrosion
in pipelines. Fitting neural network (FNN) based regression
approach was used to predict the corrosion rate, metal loss,
area of defects and number of defects. Geometrical pipeline
characteristics and fluid dynamics multiphase variables were
used as input features to the FNN. Ali et al. [8] proposed the
use of artificial neural networks in sewage system concrete
corrosion monitoring. Proposed technique used back-
propagation neural network to predict the mass loss in
different types of sewage concrete against Sulphuric acid
attack. Saenkhum et al. [9] proposed the technique for
corrosion detection and classification. Proposed technique
used Acoustic emission (AE) as corrosion detection
technique and then used Feed Forward Neural Network
(FFNN) to detect corrosion. Scaling and Adaptive Moving
Average (AMA) were applied on dataset. AE extracted
features like AE energy, AE hit and AE ring down count
were used as inputs to FFNN to classify corrosion.
This research presents a novel and a low-cost approach
for internal corrosion detection in industrial pipes. The next
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sections explain the proposed technique, background theory
behind RBF-NN, experimentation, results and conclusion.
II. PROPOSED TECHNIQUE
Fig. 1 shows the flow chart of the proposed technique.
Acoustic signals at different frequencies are generated using
a computer and are passed through corroded and healthy
sample pipes. These signals are then acquired through
acoustic sensor which is installed at another end of pipe.
Different statistical features are then extracted from the
acquired signals. These extracted features are then used as
distinct inputs to the RBF-NN. The neural network is trained
for the maximum iterations to achieve a preset Mean
Squared error (MSE). Once the desired MSE is met, the
network is trained and the weights are then freezed. This
trained neural network is then used to classify the corroded
or healthy state of pipe.
Figure 1. Algorithm Flow Chart of the Proposed Technique
III. BACKGROUND THEORY
A. Radial Basis Function Neural Network
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is basically an
information processing system that mimics a biological brain.
It is a computational model which consists of several
interconnected neurons. Architecture of neural network can
be defined based on supervised learning and unsupervised
learning. For supervised learning input patterns are provided
to the network with the corresponding target signal. The
difference between the output and the target is the error
signal. The error is then minimized to a predefined level
through continuous adaptation of the weights, against the
target signal. For unsupervised learning, neural network
classifies the signals into different classes based on
similarities in features without needing any target signal.
The structural design of radial basis function network is
like multilayer feed forward network, which, in its simplest
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is a three-layer neural network that consists of an input layer,
a hidden layer and an output layer. Input layer contains ‘n’
number of neurons whereas output layer contains ‘m’
number of neurons and there exists a hidden layer in between
the input layer and the output layer. The hypothetical
connections exist between the first two layers which are
input layer and the hidden layer, whereas weighted
connection exists between the hidden layer and the output
layer. Classification can be easily performed by utilizing
radial basis function neural network (RBF-NN), moreover,
this network can also be utilized for approximating functions
by using Gaussian potential functions [10]. RBF-NN is
trained using the training algorithm given below. Output is
computed using the Gaussian activation function. Non-
negative response is given by such function for all the values
of y. The function is represented as
(1)
The derivative of the function is represented by
(2)
The algorithm used for training of the network is given
below
Step 1: Weights are initialized (Random small values are
assigned).
Step 2: Perform steps 3-10 if the stopping condition is
not true.
Step 3: Perform steps 4-9 for each input.
p 4: Input
Step p signals are received by each input unit
Step 5: Radial basis function is calculated.
Step 6: The set of input vectors are utilized for choosing
the Radial basis functions centers. For guaranteed adequate
sampling of the input vector space sufficient numbers of
centers to be designated.
Step 7: The output of im unit vi ( xi) in the hidden layer
(3)
whereas Centre of the RBF unit for input variables,
= Width of the ith RBF unit, variable of input
pattern.
Step 8: Weights in the output layer are initialized by
assigning small random small values.
Step 9: Neural network output is calculated
(4)
whereas, = number of hidden layer nodes, = Output
value of mth node in output layer for the nth incoming pattern.
= Weight between mth output node and ith radial basis
function unit. = Biasing term at nth output node.
Step 10: Error is calculated and stopping condition is tested.
Changing of weights and number of iterations can be the
stopping condition
IV. EXPERIMENTATION
A. Data Acquisition
Experiments are conducted on steel SS-304 pipes having
one feet long length with one-inch diameter. Acoustic wave
source is installed at one end of the pipe and an acoustic
sensor is installed at the other end to acquire the signals. Five
different frequency waves of one, three, five, seven and nine
kilohertz are generated and passed through healthy pipe for a
duration of five seconds. The resulted signals are acquired at
a sample rate of 44100 Hz to fulfil the Nyquist criteria using
acoustic sensor. Same frequency acoustic waves are
generated and passed through the internally corroded pipe
and recorded. Each experiment is repeated three times for
each frequency both on healthy and corroded pipes.
Experimentation yields the dataset for healthy and corroded
pipe samples each having fifteen sample waves. Fig. 2 shows
a generalized diagram of the experimental setup.
Fig. 3 shows plot of mean values for healthy and
corroded pipe. Red line shows the corroded state and blue
line depicts the healthy state. It can be seen from the figure
that signal for the healthy pipe is clearly distinguishable from
the signal of corroded pipe. A similar trend can be seen in
plots for RMS as shown in Fig. 4. Again, the healthy pipe
signal is clearly distinguishable from corroded pipe signal.
Same can be seen in graphs of Skewness, Kurtosis, and
variance in Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 respectively. Hence these
parameters can be used as distinct features for RBF-NN.

Figure 3. Mean for healthy and corroded pipe (1 KHz)

Figure 2. Block Diagram of Data Acquisition Setup

B. Results
Recorded acoustic signals for both healthy and corroded
pipes are processed using MATLAB® to extract distinct
features. Five statistical features namely Skewness, Root
Mean Square, Kurtosis, Mean and Variance are extracted
from these recorded signals. Each recorded signal having a
duration of five seconds and a sampling frequency of 44100
Hz is processed to extract features with a windowing size of
one thousand samples. Each recorded wave yields 220
samples: therefore, fifteen healthy waves have 3300 samples.
Each feature has 3300 samples for each class, so overall
dataset consists of five features having 6600 samples each. Figure 4. RMS for healthy and corroded pipe (1 KHz)
Table I shows the Average values of these features for
healthy pipe and corroded pipe.
TABLE I. DISTINCT FEATURES OF DATASET
freq RMS Mean Kurt Skew Var
1 HP 0.853 0.005846 1.31 -0.025 0.7324
KHz CP 0.912 0.015404 1.20 -1.958 0.8368
3 HP 0.424 -1.6E-05 1.54 -0.032 0.1813
KHz CP 0.481 -6.5E-05 1.57 0.002 0.2331
5 HP 0.059 1.46E-05 1.82 -0.020 0.0035
KHz CP 0.073 1.07E-04 1.72 0.031 0.0053
7 HP 0.160 2.70E-05 1.77 -0.007 0.0258
KHz CP 0.145 -2.2E-05 1.73 -0.034 0.0211
9 HP 0.199 1.04E-04 1.56 -0.018 0.0398
KHz CP 0.098 7.91E-05 1.65 -0.029 0.0096
HP=Healthy Pipe, CP=Corroded Pipe, RMS=Root Mean Square, Kurt=
Kurtosis, Skew=Skewness, Var=Variance Figure 5. Skewness for healthy and corroded pipe (1 KHz)

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 Figure 6. Kurtosis for healthy and corroded pipe (1 KHz)
Figure 7. Variance for healthy and corroded pipe (1 KHz)
For further analysis, FFT of the acquired signal is
calculated. Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 shows 1 KHz guided wave
signal for healthy pipe and corroded pipe respectively. It can
be observed from the figure that amplitude of the peaks is
changed. In addition to this an additional peak at 5 KHz is
visible for the corroded pipe which may be introduced in the
signal due to corrosion.
Figure 8. FFT plot of 1 KHz Signal (Healthy Pipe)
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Figure 9. FFT plot of 1 KHz Signal (Corroded Pipe)
RBF-NN is used as a classifier to classify corrosion and
no corrosion state. Extracted features are used as input to the
neural network. Network was trained with five input neurons
and two output neurons. Table II shows the training
parameters for the network.
TABLE II. RBF-NN TRAINING PARAMETERS
Parameter Value
Goal MSE 0.007
Spread 1
Maximum Neurons 500
DF 25
70% of the overall dataset is used for training while 30%
is used for testing and validation of network. 4620 samples
out of 6600 are used to train the network to minimize the
mean squared error to a preset goal value of 0.0074. With 5
input neurons and 2 output neurons RBF-NN chooses the 50
hidden neurons to achieve the desired Mean squared error of
0.0074 in 50 epochs. Fig. 10 shows the convergence curve of
the RBF-NN against the preset MSE.
Figure 10. Performance Curve of Trained the RBF-NN
 Once the network is trained, updated weights are used to V. CONCLUSION
test the RBF-NN against the testing and validation data. The paper presents a novel approach for detection and
Trained network is tested against the 30% of the dataset and classification of internal corrosion in industrial pipes. The
the confusion matrix of the tested data is calculated. Table III proposed method uses low frequency range guided acoustic
shows the confusion matrix against the tested dataset. waves for detection of corrosion. Acoustic waves are
TABLE III. CONFUSION MATRIX collected at the other end of the pipe and statistical features
of the recorded waves were extracted. Distinct extracted
Actual Class features Mean, RMS, Skewness, Kurtosis and Variance are
Predicted N=1920 1 2 used as inputs to Radial basis function neural network to
Class
1 985 4 classify internal corrosion. Network is trained against a
preset goal mean squared error of 0.0074 and Accuracy of
2 5 986
the testing dataset is found to be 99.45%. Future work
involves further investigation of Machine Learning based
Performance of a classifier can be shown by Accuracy, approaches for internal corrosion classification.
Specificity and Sensitivity. These parameters can be
calculated using equations 5-7. REFERENCES
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