Study on the influence of elbow with different curvature radii on pipeline leak location

Abstract

Experimental and numerical methods are used to locate the pipeline leakage in the present work. The weak compressibility of the fluid is taken into account when simulating the propagation of negative pressure wave (NPW) in the pipeline. The NPW attenuation coefficient is used to describe the influences of curvature radius on location accuracy. The results indicate that when the curvature radius is small, the location accuracy of pipeline leakage is low. When the radius of curvature increases or the inlet pressure increases, the accuracy of pipeline leak location is improved. Besides, with the change of inlet pressure, pressure, and velocity distributions in the elbow with different curvature radii are investigated. When the curvature radius of the elbow is three to four times of pipe diameter, the measurement accuracy of leakage location is the best. When the inlet pressure of the pipeline is 0.7 MPa, the sensitivity of the pipeline detection is the highest. The cavitation corrosion at the elbow is the most obvious. Therefore, the elbow is the area where pipeline leakage occurs most frequently.