Lessons from two field tests on pipeline damage detection using acceleration measurement (Invited Paper)

Early detection of pipeline damages has been highlighted in water supply industry. Water pressure change in pipeline due to a sudden rupture causes pipe to vibrate and the pressure change propagates through the pipeline. From the measurement of pipe vibration the rupture can be detected. In this paper, the field test results and observations are provided for implementing next generation of SCADA system for pipeline rupture detection. Two field tests were performed on real buried plastic and metal pipelines for rupture detection. The rupture was simulated by introducing sudden water pressure drop caused by water blow-off and valve control. The measured acceleration data at the pipe surfaces were analyzed in both time and frequency domain. In time domain, the sudden narrow increase of acceleration amplitude was used as an indication of rupture event. For the frequency domain analysis, correlation function and the short time Fourier Transform technique were adopted to trace the dominant frequency shift. The success of rupture detection was found to be dependent on several factors. From the frequency analysis, the dominant frequency of metal water pipe was shifted by the water pressure drop, however, it was hard to identify from the plastic pipeline. Also the influence of existing facility such as airvac on pipe vibrations was observed. Finally, several critical lessons learned in the viewpoint of field measurement are discussed in this paper.