Investigation and Characterization of Pipe Defects and Techniques, and Challenges Toward the Protection of Environmental Protection

Pipes have been used for many years to transport fluids safely. Historically, pipes have been used in many different ways; however, many internal and external parameters affect the use of pipes, such as leakage, chemical corrosion, fatigue, and sediment. Additionally, pipe environments and soil components, such as humidity, can cause problems. All these factors are sources of risks that affect the installation and maintenance costs of the pipelines. This paper provides pipelines, users with a comprehensive description of pipe defects, their type, and their potential cause, which can be used as a reliable reference to recognize and predict pipe defects and make proper arrangements to avoid catastrophic incidents. Therefore, pipelines and their inspection methods are examined from multiple perspectives, including material composition, design, applications, and overall performance. Besides, pipelines, defect causes visual changes, making visual inspection methods valuable to the manufacturing sector and inspectors. However, in all inspections, the pipe length, size, internal diameter, location, and toxic environment around the pipes are the main limitations of assessments. To improve defect recognition, completely categorized defect types, shapes, and pipelines, defect diagnostic systems are introduced and compared to the concept of defect shape and diagnostic platforms. As stated in this review, steel, concrete, and PVC are the most commonly used pipeline materials, with welding defects, cracks, and corrosion as major concerns. Vision-based robotic inspection, AI-driven analytics, and advanced modeling improve defect detection and predictive maintenance. Integrating these technologies enhances pipelines, monitoring, safety, and longevity. Additionally, vision-based inspection systems can leverage defect categorization to develop a standardized image database, expanding the capabilities of existing systems. Finally, a review of recent and essential analytical research and some areas that still need more work are presented. In particular, they can offer researchers opportunities for their future research.