This work pertains to the diagnosis of faults in a physically widely dispersed pipeline system. In particular we treat the problem of leak location in a gas transport pipeline.
We have developed a new acoustic method which (a) requires less effort and uses more economical instrumentation than any of the existing method, (b) does not require significant interruption of the pipeline operation, and (c) can locate leak sites clearly. The basic idea underlying the proposed method is derived from the theory of wind instruments. We utilize the fact that the tone of a giant wind instrument (the pipeline) changes in the event of a leak, and we evaluate this change by estimating the acoustic impulse response in the pipeline from acoustic signals detected at the two terminuses of the pipeline.
In addition to explaining the theoretical development that shows why and how the proposed method can detect and locate a leak in a pipeline, we present some experimental results collected under realistic operating conditions with comparisons with simulation results that validate the detection theory and show the desired measurement condition to locate leak site in a gas transport pipeline via simulation.