Previous Issues

Civil Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: aalkhomairi@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Unsteady pipe flow equations are used along with the orifice equation to simulate unsteady pipe flow with a sudden leak event using the method of characteristics (MOC). The resulting real-time simulation model (RTM) is verified by comparing its output against measured data of laboratory leak tests using a pipe 300 m long and 2.54 cm in diameter. To overcome the long response time of flow measurement, recently developed flow sensor technology was used. This study uses a different simulation formulation at the leak location from other studies. A short, frictionless pipe that discharges to the atmosphere is considered at the leak location, and the transient pressure head is used to establish the initial leak opening coefficient just before leak occurrence. This study deals with flow discrepancy histories rather than the more easily obtained pressure histories used in the literature. The proposed simulation approach was found to be satisfactorily accurate.

Keywords: Leak Detection, pipe flow simulation, unsteady flow.