Detection of leaks in pipelines
First Claim
1. An apparatus for detecting a leak in an underground pipe and for determining a location of a detected leak in the pipe, comprising:
- a plurality of remote acoustic transducer sensor units at spaced sensor locations along the pipe, each responsive to acoustic energy from the pipe at each sensor location, to generate acoustic signals from each sensor location, each acoustic signal having an amplitude;
a central processor remotely located from the sensor units and including program means for containing acoustic transmission characteristics for the pipe and acoustic features of an acoustic signal generated by a leak in the pipe;
the central processor also including analysis means at a remote location from the sensor locations, and operatively connected to each transducer unit and to the program means for subjecting each signal to pattern recognition analysis to determine the presence of the acoustic features in each signal, the presence of the acoustic features indicating the presence of a leak in the pipe and thus detection of the leak, the analysis means also using an amplitude of each signal containing the acoustic features to identify two adjacent sensor locations at which the signals containing the acoustic features have greatest amplitude, the leak in the pipe being located between the two adjacent sensor locations, the analysis means using the transmission characteristics of the pipe and a relative amplitude between the signals at the two adjacent sensor locations to interpolate and identify a leak location for the leak in the pipe; and
the analysis means extracting a plurality of linear predictive coding (LPC) cepstrum coefficients as the acoustic features.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An apparatus and process for determining the existence and location of a leak in an underground pipe, comprises a plurality of remote acoustic transmission sensor units distributed along the pipe and each containing equipment for analyzing acoustic signals from the pipe. The equipment includes a mechanism for identifying acoustic features of the acoustic signals which distinguish the acoustic signals of a leak from ambient acoustic signals. A control unit is connected to each of the remote units and includes additional equipment for further analyzing the signals to determine the proximity of the signal to a particular remote unit and, using the amplitude of the signal and the transmission characteristics of the pipe, determining the location of the leak.
166 Citations
4 Claims
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1. An apparatus for detecting a leak in an underground pipe and for determining a location of a detected leak in the pipe, comprising:
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a plurality of remote acoustic transducer sensor units at spaced sensor locations along the pipe, each responsive to acoustic energy from the pipe at each sensor location, to generate acoustic signals from each sensor location, each acoustic signal having an amplitude; a central processor remotely located from the sensor units and including program means for containing acoustic transmission characteristics for the pipe and acoustic features of an acoustic signal generated by a leak in the pipe; the central processor also including analysis means at a remote location from the sensor locations, and operatively connected to each transducer unit and to the program means for subjecting each signal to pattern recognition analysis to determine the presence of the acoustic features in each signal, the presence of the acoustic features indicating the presence of a leak in the pipe and thus detection of the leak, the analysis means also using an amplitude of each signal containing the acoustic features to identify two adjacent sensor locations at which the signals containing the acoustic features have greatest amplitude, the leak in the pipe being located between the two adjacent sensor locations, the analysis means using the transmission characteristics of the pipe and a relative amplitude between the signals at the two adjacent sensor locations to interpolate and identify a leak location for the leak in the pipe; and the analysis means extracting a plurality of linear predictive coding (LPC) cepstrum coefficients as the acoustic features. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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Specification