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| Author(s): |
Mauricio Kiotsune Iwanaga
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Ilha Solteira. 2019-09-12. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Engenharia. Ilha Solteira |
| Defense date: | 2019-08-09 |
| Advisor: | Michael John Brennan; Oscar Scussel |
| Abstract | |
Leakage in buried water pipes is an important problem since a large amount of water is wasted between the treatment plant and the consumers. To deal with such a problem, water companies have used some devices to localize leaks in the pipe network. Listening devices and leak noise correlators are the most popular equipment used in the field by the water companies around the world. Leak noise correlators are important devices used to localize leaks in buried pipes by calculating the time delay between the signals measured by the sensors positioned either side of a suspected leak. Since water companies have to decide which leak noise correlator is more suitable for each pipe network, they have to carry out some field tests to assist in this decision and to train the personnel that handles such a device, which ideally must be exposed to different conditions, such as pipes with different materials and geometries, different types of soil, different leak strengths, etc. The main objective of this research project is to contribute with the necessity of the water companies by designing an indoor bench-top device capable to reproduce the pipe vibrations generated by a leak in the field. The device, called virtual pipe test rig, comprises a computer and a dual-channel power amplifier supplying two shakers. In the computer, leak noise is synthesized by using a model of a buried leaking pipe implemented using the software Matlab®. Since the systems, composed by the power amplifiers and the shakers, have dynamics that affect the vibrations they generate, compensation of the system dynamics is necessary. This is carried out using compensators, which are filters that are realized in the computer, that compensate for the dynamics by filtering the input signals before supplying them to the amplifiers. The results provided by the compensation were verified in the computer, by combining the response of the systems and the response of the compensators, and by carrying out a laboratory experiment. Further experiments were carried out, in which the synthesized leak noise is filtered by the compensators before supplying the power amplifiers and the shakers, simulating a leak in a buried pipe. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 17/16953-8 - Development of a virtual PIPE test rig for testing acoustic correlators for leak detection in buried water pipes |
| Grantee: | Mauricio Kiotsune Iwanaga |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |