Pipe crack early warning for burst prevention by permanent acoustic noise level monitoring in smart water networks

Abstract

Managing pipe breaks in water supply networks has been a challenge for water utilities around the world. In order to transform from reactive to proactive management of pipe breaks, South Australia Water Corporation (SA Water) has invested more than 4 million dollars to set up a Smart Water Network (SWN), in the central business district (CBD) of Adelaide. The network includes 305 permanent accelerometers that continuously monitor the ‘noise level’ in the water network. When a new pipe crack forms, the baseline noise level of the continuous measurements increases (relative to ‘normal’ network and other ‘environmental’ diurnal noise variations). This research develops a technique for automated pipe crack detection by detecting baseline changes in continuous noise measurements from the accelerometers. The developed technique is validated by field data from Adelaide SWN, and results confirm that the developed technique can achieve cost-effective early pipe crack detection and uncontrolled main break prevention.