An Advancement in the detection of pipe leaks

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Drinking Water Research, 11, Nov./Dec. 6, p. 15, 2001-11-01

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An Advancement in the detection of pipe leaks

Hunaidi, O.

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An Advancement in the detection of pipe leaks

Hunaidi, O.

A version of this paper is published in / Une version de ce document se trouve dans:

Drinking Water Research, v. 11, no. 6, Nov./Dec. 2001, p. 15

www.nrc.ca/irc/ircpubs

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An Advancement in the

Detection of Pipe Leaks

By Osama Hunaidi, Ph.D., Institute for Research in Construction, National Research Council of Canada

In many waterdis tri bu tion sys tems, a large per -cent age of the water is lost in tran sit from treat ment plants to con sum -ers. Water leaks are waste ful, costly, and cre -ate a pub lic health risk. The amount of water that is lost or unac counted for is typ i cally 20 to 30 per -cent and can be as high as 50 per cent for older sys tems. The losses stem from leak age, meter ing errors, fire fight ing, pipe flush ing, and theft. Leak -age is usu ally the major cause.

Acous tic devices are the prin ci pal type of equip ment used by water util i -ties to locate leaks, but all have lim i ta tions, par -tic u larly for the detec tion of leaks in plas tic pipes, large-diam e ter con crete pipes, and in pipes below

the water table or in clay soils.

The involve ment of the Insti tute for Research in Con struc tion (IRC) in pipe line leak detec tion orig i nates from a research pro ject funded by the Awwa Research Foun da tion (AwwaRF). The study inves ti gated ways of improv ing leak detec tion for plas tic pipes.

In the study, IRC research ers worked exten sively with

leakdetec tion pro fes sion -als from Can ada and the United States and con se quently devel oped a thor -ough under stand ing of the lim i ta tions of exist ing leak-detec tion equip ment and an appre ci a tion of the indus try’s need for

user-friendly, low-cost, effec tive meth ods. The AwwaRF pro ject resulted in sev eral modifications that can improve the effec tive ness of acous tic leak-detec tion equip ment and prac tices. Ensuing work by IRC resulted in the devel op ment of a new leakdetec -tion sys tem called LeakFinder, which is a leak-noise correlator. This means it cal cu lates the loca tion of the leak based on the dif fer ence in time it takes the sound from a sus pected leak to travel to two vibra tion sen sors or hydrophones (or under wa ter micro -phones) that bracket the leak. The tech nol ogy com bines the advan tages of acous tic detec tion with the power of the per sonal com puter.

The fea tures of this technology include the fol low ing:

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Fieldver i fied accu -racy on PVC, cast and duc tile iron, asbes tos cement, and largediam e -ter con crete pipes

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Adjust able play back speed for lis ten ing to inau di ble low-fre quency leak sounds in plas tic pipes

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Famil iar and easytouse Win dows envi ron -ment, online help, and doc u men ta tion

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Low cost, which will help many users who can not afford exist ing com mer cial sys tems

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Per ma nent stor age of leak sounds for off-site re-anal y sis and eval u a tion

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Easy mod i fi ca tion to incor po rate the lat est sig nal-pro cess ing advances and hard ware devel op ments

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Easy inte gra tion with com mer cial off-the-shelf wire less data trans mis -sion devices and vibra tion sen sors or hydrophones to pro vide a com plete leak detec tion sys tem. This tech nol ogy is a major advance in the detec tion of leaks in water dis tri bu tion sys -tems. It makes it pos si ble to detect leaks that were pre vi ously very dif fi cult to find with exist ing sys tems. For a dem on stra -tion of the tech nol ogy, please visit the fol low ing website: <www.nrc.ca/ irc/leak/leakfinder/>.