Application of an improved variational mode decomposition algorithm in leakage location detection of water supply pipeline

Abstract

In the research of pipeline leak location, signal decomposition can be used to extract effective leak signal components. Variational mode decomposition (VMD) can decompose a complex non-stationary signals into several simple band-limited intrinsic mode functions (BLIMFs). However, the number of modes K and the quadratic penalty item α need to be preset before using VMD, which brings limitations to VMD. Therefore, an improved adaptive VMD (IAVMD) is proposed in this paper. This method can adaptively determine the quadratic penalty item α for each BLIMF according to the frequency characteristics of the signal. Meanwhile, the energy loss coefficient and the correlation of adjacent BLIMFs is regarded as an evaluation index to determine the best number of modes K. Finally, this method is used to locate the leak location of water pipelines, which can significantly improve the positioning accuracy.