TY - GEN
T1 - Study on pinhole leaks in gas pipelines
T2 - 11th International Conference on Advances in Fluid Dynamics with emphasis on Multiphase and Complex Flow, AFM/MPF 2021
AU - Ayyildiz, Burak
AU - Rahman, Muhammad Azizur
AU - Delgado, Adolfo
AU - Hassan, Ibrahim
AU - Nounou, Hazem
AU - Hassan, Rashid
AU - Nounou, Mohamed
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 WIT Press.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In the present study, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of pinhole leaks (1.27-3.3 mm) in a low-pressure, up to 2.5 bars, air pipeline which has 16 mm (0.62 inch) inner diameter has been performed by using a 3D transient DES (detachable eddy simulation) model of a commercial CFD code, ANSYS Fluent R3. Also, a laboratory-scale experimental setup is established with a 5 m long pipe with inner diameter (ID) = 16 mm. In steady operational stages, mass balance method is used to calculate the leakage mass flow rate in the experimental setup. In addition, pressure point analysis (PPA) with two dynamic and one differential pressure gauges is used to detect chronic/small leaks at transient stages. This method is cost effective and easy to maintain compared to expensive acoustic leak detection systems. The numerical results were validated against the experimental data. The simulations values of leakage mass flow rate are slightly higher (∼10%) than the experiments but overall the simulation results are in good agreement with experiment. The proposed model simulates the flow leakage, pressure distribution and velocity profile around the defined size of the leakage. Transient simulation is performed to use power spectral density (PSD) and Fast Fourier transformation (FFT) of the acoustic pressure variation to predict acoustic oscillations and turbulent behavior of the flow field around the leakage location. These results could help advance current understandings of several leak detection systems that will reduce the false alarms of the leakage monitoring systems.
AB - In the present study, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of pinhole leaks (1.27-3.3 mm) in a low-pressure, up to 2.5 bars, air pipeline which has 16 mm (0.62 inch) inner diameter has been performed by using a 3D transient DES (detachable eddy simulation) model of a commercial CFD code, ANSYS Fluent R3. Also, a laboratory-scale experimental setup is established with a 5 m long pipe with inner diameter (ID) = 16 mm. In steady operational stages, mass balance method is used to calculate the leakage mass flow rate in the experimental setup. In addition, pressure point analysis (PPA) with two dynamic and one differential pressure gauges is used to detect chronic/small leaks at transient stages. This method is cost effective and easy to maintain compared to expensive acoustic leak detection systems. The numerical results were validated against the experimental data. The simulations values of leakage mass flow rate are slightly higher (∼10%) than the experiments but overall the simulation results are in good agreement with experiment. The proposed model simulates the flow leakage, pressure distribution and velocity profile around the defined size of the leakage. Transient simulation is performed to use power spectral density (PSD) and Fast Fourier transformation (FFT) of the acoustic pressure variation to predict acoustic oscillations and turbulent behavior of the flow field around the leakage location. These results could help advance current understandings of several leak detection systems that will reduce the false alarms of the leakage monitoring systems.
KW - CFD simulation
KW - Chronic leak detection
KW - Dynamic pressure wave monitoring
KW - Gas pipeline leakage
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85124015619
U2 - 10.2495/MPF210111
DO - 10.2495/MPF210111
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85124015619
T3 - WIT Transactions on Engineering Sciences
SP - 129
EP - 140
BT - Advances in Fluid Dynamics with emphasis on Multiphase and Complex Flow
A2 - Hernandez, Santiago
PB - WITPress
Y2 - 6 July 2021 through 8 July 2021
ER -