AI Smart Pipe Corrosion Monitor based on STM32L4

Client

An oil & gas integrity management company looking for a non-invasive, clamp-on corrosion monitoring solution for pipeline networks.

Challenge

Measuring pipe wall thickness through coatings and rust, at pipe temperatures up to 150°C, with sufficient accuracy to detect corrosion rates as low as 0.1mm/year.

Product Concept & Architecture

The STM32L4 MCU controls a 2.25MHz dual-element ultrasonic transducer. A Quectel BG96 modem provides LTE-M/NB-IoT backhaul. The sensor mounts via rare-earth magnets and includes a high-temperature silicone thermal break.

Engineering Solution

The STM32L4's hardware timer generates the excitation pulse, and its high-speed comparator captures echo return with 1ns resolution. Wall thickness is computed from round-trip time using temperature-compensated acoustic velocity. A moving-average trend filter extracts the corrosion rate from thickness measurements.

Result

±0.1mm thickness measurement accuracy. Corrosion rate detection as low as 0.05mm/year.