Analysis of the Propagation Characteristics of Acoustic Waves From Leakages in Buried Gas Pipelines

• Published in: IEEE access 2023, Vol.11, p.113042-113049
• Main Authors: Liu, Song, Liu, Anqi, Cai, Zefeng, Sun, Chunfeng, Liu, Ruochen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustic absorption; Acoustic attenuation; Acoustic propagation; Acoustic waves; Acoustics; Algorithms; Attenuation; Attenuation measurement; attenuation model; buried gas pipeline; Buried pipes; ESMD; False alarms; Gas detectors; Gas pipelines; Leak detection; Mathematical models; Natural gas; Noise reduction; Pipelines; Propagation; Soil measurements; Soils; Wave attenuation; Wave propagation
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3323251

In order to accurately detect the leakages in buried gas pipelines and to reduce the leakage amount and false alarms, the propagation characteristics of acoustic waves owing to leakages in buried gas pipelines are analyzed. Firstly, the coupling effect of soil particles and gas, including the diffusion of acoustic waves by the soil, the scattering of acoustic waves by particles in the soil and the absorption of acoustic energy by the soil medium, is considered to establish a propagation attenuation model for acoustic waves resulted from leakages in buried gas pipelines. As acoustic waves are prone to the influence of noise in the process of propagation, an improved extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition (IESMD) acoustic signal denoising algorithm is proposed, which can effectively filter out the noise in the signal. The experimental results prove the accuracy and denoising capability of the established acoustic wave attenuation model for buried gas pipelines, demonstrating a potential improvement of the leakage detection technology for buried pipelines.