DETAILS OF PROJECT PROPOSERS
Title of Project or
Research Theme
Project sponsor(s)
Fundamentals of Leak Detection in Water Distribution Systems
Organisation
Name
Northumbrian Water Ltd
Chris Jones
Academic supervisor2
University
Name
University of Sheffield
Prof Stephen Beck
DETAILS OF THE PROJECT
Project Description
Research challenge / questions
This theme would investigate questions such as the following:
Do leaks of different sizes and failure modes, and on different pipe
materials, have different characteristics? If so, can this information be extracted by more
sophisticated use of leak detection techniques?
Are there a large number of leaks present in the networks that cannot
be detected by current technologies? Can they be categorised by type or size, or pipe material,
condition or age?
Can we determine the size (flow rate) of a leak before we excavate?
Which types of leak detection are less effective following pressure reduction?
Do more intensive leakage surveys lead to more small leaks being found?
Methodology
In order to produce results that are both academically sound and useful to the industry, it will
be necessary to find out what the state of both research and practise is, and then use
experimental techniques, both in the lab and the field to examine the effect of different sises
and shapes of crack on those techniques, including threshold leak size and the effects of
pressure and distance on detection viability.
The main milestones on this project will be the following
1) A survey of current leak detection techniques. There is all ready a lot of work that has
been done on this it should be relatively simple.
2) An investigation into previous research into the effects of crack morphology on these
techniques. This will be a more taxing task as there is unlikely to be much information
on it in the scientific literature.
3) Search water company repair databases to find out about leak size and type
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distribution . This will concentrate on the smallest leaks that have been detected and
repaired.
In conjunction with the industrial partners, decide on a very few techniques that will be
focussed on to do the rest of the research. This will be noise detection and possible a
surge, reflection method.
Use existing rigs to see how different pressures affect signal strength and hence
detection likelihood.
Do the same for the effects of leak size, initially starting with round holes
Then the researcher will go on to examining differently shaped holes with the same,
steady state leak rates. This will examine what the difference is in signals from
nominally similar leaks.
We will then see how we can, ab initio, detect what type and size of leak there is, based
on the signal.
See if the methods work in the field, by working in parallel with industry leak teams.
If time permits, the process will be repeated with different distances, materials and
sizes.
Scientific contribution of the project together with any other innovative aspects.
This is really important work, as there has not been much of a fundamental examination of
the practise of leak detection. Correlators have been uses for some time, and there are a
variety of other techniques either being implemented or proposed.
This project will look at them in overview and a few in great depth to extend their usage into ,
not just detection, but also identification of crack size and type.
This will be done using laboratory tests, and field trials. This will also be compared with
samples from real networks. In parallel, water company databases will be interrogated in
order to get an idea of the range of leaks that have been identified and repaired. This will allow
an indication of the number and size of leaks that exist to be able to indicate what sort of
repair and renewables should be conducted.
It should also be able to help water companies better understand their assets by allowing
them a better idea of what sort of leaks they have to be able to understand where water is
leaking and the effects of different size and shapes of leak.
This type of work has either not been conducted, or is of only know to companies that produce
technology, so its identification and publication is of great interest to both the water industry
and academia.
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