A theoretical model of leakage noise for the extraction of physical features for leak detection in water supply pipelines

Efficient monitoring of leakage in urban water supply pipelines is of great significance for water resource conservation and ensuring the safety of residential water usage. This study conducts both theoretical and experimental investigations into the mechanism of leakage noise generation in water supply pipelines. A theoretical model for the power spectral density of the acoustic source of orifice leakage noise in pipelines is established, followed by experimental validation and parameter sensitivity analysis. Based on the theoretical model, an effective physical feature for leak detection is proposed, addressing the limitations of existing methods that overly rely on data-driven features. A field leakage simulation test is conducted on a long-distance operational water supply pipeline to validate the effectiveness of the proposed physical indicators. The results demonstrate that the leak detection accuracy in the in-situ test reaches 96.94%.