Leakage Localisation Using Cross Correlation for Wireless Three-Axis Vibration Sensors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that wireless three-axis vibration sensors combined with cross-correlation techniques can effectively localize small leaks in ABS pipelines, offering a promising approach for leak detection in water distribution systems.

Contribution

It introduces the use of three-axis vibration sensors for leak localization in pipelines, expanding the application of cross-correlation methods beyond acoustic and pressure sensors.

Findings

Three-axis vibration sensors can accurately localize small leaks.

Sensor distance and water pressure affect localization accuracy.

Filtering noise improves leak detection precision.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the application of the cross-correlation technique in localizing the leakage in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) pipeline using wireless three-axis vibration sensors. Most of the existing leak localization techniques that utilized the cross-correlation method is using acoustic and pressure sensors. This study explored the impact of using three-axis vibration sensor ADXL335 to localize the leakages in ABS pipeline. The study focused on the small leak size of 1 mm and the effect of sensor distance and different water pressure is studied. The vibration data used in the cross-correlation data were filtered against the noise interference from the water pipeline. The source of noise interference from the water pipeline are motor, water pump, and valve. The computed leak localization accuracy against the actual leak distance from the three-axis was analyzed. The leakage localization formula is improvised by adding buffer time to have an accurate result. From the experiment, it was discovered that three-axis vibration sensor can be used to localize the leakages in plastic water pipeline and it is suitable for deployment in small to medium water distribution network or within a building.