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Simulation and detection of blockage in a pipe under mean fluid flow using acoustic wave propagation technique
Author(s) -
Abdullahi Mustapha,
Oyadiji S. Olutunde
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
structural control and health monitoring
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.587
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1545-2263
pISSN - 1545-2255
DOI - 10.1002/stc.2449
Subject(s) - computational fluid dynamics , pipeline transport , finite element method , flow (mathematics) , acoustics , compressibility , flow velocity , fluid dynamics , sizing , pipeline (software) , engineering , airflow , structural engineering , mechanics , simulation , mechanical engineering , physics , aerospace engineering , chemistry , organic chemistry
Summary Pipeline blockage can result in the reduction of system carrying capacity, energy and resource wastage, and potential increase in the probability of occurrence of environmental and health problems. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a methodology to simulate acoustic wave propagation (AWP) in partially blocked fluid‐filled pipes with flow under different flow velocities. This was achieved by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software in conjunction with an external user‐defined function (UDF) file, which introduces compressibility effect into the CFD solution. The use of finite element analysis (FEA) to simulate AWP in fluid‐filled pipelines with blockage has been previously reported without flow. In this paper, both CFD and FEA techniques were used to simulate the AWP in air‐filled pipelines without mean flow. However, it is shown that only the CFD technique could be used to simulate the AWP in air‐filled pipelines with mean flow. The secondary purpose of the paper is to use the simulated acoustic waveforms to illustrate a blockage identification procedure for detection, localisation, and sizing of blockages in fluid‐filled pipes using time of flight (ToF) methodology. It is shown that the ToF accurately detects and locates blockages in blocked pipelines. The errors in the localisation of blockages were less than 4%. Furthermore, the effects of blockage size and the mean flow velocity on the AWP characteristics are established. It is shown that both the size of the blockage in a pipe and the mean flow velocity affect the pressure amplitude of the transmitted and reflected waveforms.