The CMEKF method for sub-sea pipeline monitoring and leak detection

A practical approach is discussed for sub-sea pipeline monitoring and leak detection based on the real time transient model (RTTM). The characteristic method (CM) of transient simulation is coupled with the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate the system state where the only observed data are inlet and outlet flow rate and pressure. Because EKF has a time variant track under the non-stationary stochastic process with additive Gaussian noise, the high sensitivity of RTTM to non-stationary operating condition is reduced. A leak location recursion estimation formula is presented based on the real time observed data. The results of 27 groups of test data indicate that the procedure presented is sensitive to a wide range of detectable leak sizes (1.5% similar to 57% of inlet flow rate) and has a low average relative error of leak location (< 5%).