The underground gas explosion incident along a drainage system which occurred at midnight of 31 July 2014 in Kaohsiung City has drawn the attention of experts in various fields in Taiwan. The immediate cause of the gas explosion was traced back to a ruptured liquid propylene transmission pipeline inside an underground concrete culvert. The engineering community in Taiwan may contribute by suggesting areas to look into to make the technical aspect clearer. For this purpose, this special issue tries to probe into some aspects of the course of the rupture failure and techniques for detecting defects in the pipeline. There are a total of four manuscripts written by leading researchers in Taiwan in specific area of Mechanical Engineering are included in this special issue. Each manuscript underwent technical peer review consistent with the standards of scientific publications. The first invited paper was related to the risk-based assessment and management, risk-based inspection and maintenance. The difficulties in adopting existing risk-based approaches to inspect and manage Kaohsiung’s underground pipelines were pointed out. The second invited paper performed the failure analysis by making reasonable assumptions using the information disclosed. The third invited paper used a distributed fiber-optic sensing system to measure the strain and detect the existence and location of the thinning defects in pressured pipes. The last invited paper demonstrated the technique of using guided waves to detect corrosion and defects in pipelines, especially in the case of buried pipes. Special thanks will be given to all the authors for their excellent contribution, and all the reviewers for their diligent effort and valuable comments which help greatly in elevating the quality of this special issue.
Chien-Ching Ma
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taiwan University
[email protected]