Design and Analysis of a Water Pipe Leakage Sensor

Abstract

Water pipeline leakage is a common problem in almost every country in the world which has become a shared concern today. While some regions do not even have the access to clean and treated water, others have seen millions of litres of water wasted every day due to leakages which probably could have been sufficient to serve the needy. In most cases, the detrimental effects associated with the occurrence of leaks may present serious problems and therefore, leaks must be quickly detected, located and repaired. Recent advances in sensor technology have resulted in a wide application of sensor networks for the purpose of leakage management. Currently, researchers have gone as far as putting the sensors inside the pipeline itself to identify, locate and estimate the leak size. In the current study, CFD simulations were used to find the drag coefficient associated with the designs prepared which is an important parameter in this study. The work has been validated with the previous work. The main outcome from the study was the drag coefficient produced from the proposed model is significantly higher than the reference design. For the water pipe case, this a favourable outcome.

Transient-Based Leak Detection and Monitoring of Water Pipes Using Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) Method

“…Leakage from external pipes and by visual inspection and the use of certain devices is easily identified. The underground pipes are however another challenge to track the leakage, so the small in-line sensor should be useful [2].…”

Numerical Analysis of a Mobile Leakage-Detection System for a Water Pipeline Network

“…For example, In Pahang (Malaysia), the water loss rate caused by leaking water pipes is as high as 50%, while the current national average is 35% which almost thrice that of developed countries estimated by the World Bank, and is far from reaching the government's goal of reducing non-revenue water (NRW) to 25% by 2020 [1]. Water produced and lost before reaching the customer due to leaking pipes, illegal tapping or theft, and management issues is called non-revenue water (NRW) [2]. Besides, leakage of water pipes may cause problems such as lack of drinking water and ground subsidence [3].…”

“…Thus, a new model of leakage sensor for detecting leakage from inside the pipeline is proposed in this study. The new model's performance was determined using Ansys Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation and was validated based on a previous study by Zaki et al, [2]. The crucial parameter for performance evaluation is each simulated model's drag value because increasing the drag coefficient value would significantly increase the drag force.…”