Leakage localization in an underground pressurized pipeline in steady-state

A new easy-to-implement approach based on low sampling rate sensors is proposed to estimate artificial leakage location in pressurized gas-filled pipelines. The proposed technique requires low sampling rate data and similar to some previous studies, acoustic sensors are localized on one side of the leakage. Previous studies have mainly placed sensors on both sides of the leakage which make it challenging to implement especially for long pipeline applications. This paper proposes a novel technique to localize artificial leakage in a buried and non-buried pipeline by implementing two simple electret microphones and attenuation analysis of recorded signals. An experimental set-up is conducted on a pressurized carbon steel pipe to validate the proposed method. The effects of pressure, orifice diameters and depth of specimen and sensor in the ground on the final result are discussed. The exper-imental results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed technique in low sampling rate data.