Acoustic Emission Leak Detection on a Metal Pipeline Buried in Sandy Soil

AbstractAn acoustic emission (AE) method was used to detect leaks and discern their location under flow conditions in a 304.8-m-long, 305-mm-diameter buried steel pipeline at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (NJIT/USEPA) Buried Pipeline Test Facility in Edison, New Jersey. A 16.2  mL/s leak was successfully detected, and its discernible location was indicated to within 0.3 m, with a sensor separation of 65.5 m, and with water in the pipeline flowing at 11.4  L/s. Encouraging results were also obtained for a 1.3  mL/s leak that was discernible at a sensor separation of 21.3 m under the same flow conditions. Previous static pressure leak testing on this pipeline detected a 12.6  mL/s leak at sensor separations of up to 192.9 m, and it is expected that mitigating the effects of both externally produced and flow-induced background noise will allow for the detection of smaller leak rates under greater flow conditions. These results demonstrated that effective AE leak ...