Identification of acoustic wave propagation in a duct line and its application to detection of impact source location based on signal processing

Abstract

For the detection of the impact location in a pipeline system, the correlation method has been the conventional method. For the application of the correlation method, the diameter of a duct should be small so that the acoustic wave inside the duct can propagate with nondispersive characteristics, in the form of, for example, a plane wave. This correlation method calculates the cross-correlation between acoustic waves measured at two acceleration sensors attached to a buried duct. It also gives information about the arrival time delay of an acoustic wave between two sensors. These arrival time delays are used for the estimation of the impact location. However, when the diameter of the duct is large, the acoustic waves inside the duct propagate with dispersive characteristics owing to the reflection of the acoustic wave off of the wall of the duct. This dispersive characteristic is related to the acoustic modes inside a duct. Therefore, the correlation method does not work correctly for the detection of the impact location. This paper proposes new methods of accurately measuring the arrival time delay between two sensors attached to duct line system. This method is based on the time-frequency analyses of the short time Fourier transform (STFT) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT). These methods can discriminate direct waves (non-dispersive waves) and reflective waves (dispersive waves) from the measured wave signals through the time-frequency analysis. The direct wave or the reflective wave is used to estimate the arrival time delay. This delay is used for the identification of the impact location. This systematic method can predict the impact location due to the impact forces of construction equipment with more accuracy than the correlation method.