Leak Detection in Pressurized Pipe Using Acoustic Emission Method

There are two destructive and non-destructive inspection methods to ensure the operation of pipelines, pressure vessels and defects in industrial sheets. One of the important issues in oil and gas transmission lines and pressure vessels is leakage issue. The leak test is one of the non-destructive testing methods that relates to the entry or exit of a fluid from a high pressure environment to a low pressure environment. Acoustic emission is one of the non-destructive methods which is used for leakage locating. The jet produced due to leakage causes the pipe to vibrate and so acoustic waves will propagate through the pipe. Due to different source-sensor distances, acoustic sensors will capture the signals with time delay. In this study the first arriving time and so time delay between sensors can be estimated using Akaike Information Criteria method. Acoustic signals will capture using two R15a sensors located on two sides of leakage. In this study, first leakage tests were carried out on a pressurized pipe. The results showed that using AIC technique leakage location can be done with a mean error of 1.4%. In the next step, experiments were carried out to locate the acoustic source on a steel sheet. The results showed that using AIC method, an acoustic source location can be estimated with an average error of 3.92%.