Experimental investigation into the acoustic characteristics of the ground surface response due to leakage in buried water-filled pipelines

The research based on the acoustic transmission characteristics of pipelines has been widely used. However, little work has been done to detect leakage signals of buried pipelines on the surface. In this paper, the sensor array on the surface is used to detect the leakage signal of buried water-filled pipeline. The acoustic characteristics of leakage noise measured under controlled conditions are mainly studied, including different axes of accelerometer, different height of soil cover, different horizontal spacing, different pipe pressure and so on. It is found that the signal from x-axis and y-axis of the accelerometer parallel to the ground surface are more obvious. On the contrary, the effect of z-axis detection perpendicular to the ground plane is relatively weak. The leakage signal decreases with the overlying soil height increased, and the attenuation intensity decreases from strong to weak. The higher the pipe pressure is, the more obvious the leakage signal is. The closer to the leakage point on the ground surface, the stronger the energy of the leakage signal is. In this paper, geographic information system (GIS) is used to calibrate the relative position of the detection array in advance, and the preliminary measurement of the leakage signal of buried pipeline is carried out. The experimental results show that it is feasible to detect the leakage of buried water-filled pipeline through the surface. In the future, further research work will be carried out to study the measuring range of surface detection and the detectable range of leakage flow.