Online Pipe Leakage Detection Using the Vibration-Based Wireless Sensing System

Piping systems are widely utilized in industry and home. Leakage of piping systems induced by prolonged corrosion, severe weather, or man-made damage will lead to serious consequences like explosion disasters, severe damage to industrial equipment, unforeseeable waste of resources and even threaten human life. WSNs significantly attract attentions in Industry 4.0 in recent years due to their advantages of wide distribution, remote controllability, convenient portability, easy programming, and economy. Meanwhile, as a non-intrusive measurement technique, vibration manifests a great potential for leakage detection of piping systems. In this paper, a vibration-based wireless sensing system is developed to remotely monitor the condition of piping systems in real time. According to the analytical results of vibration signals at two different positions on the piping system, the effective statistical features are extracted at the wireless sensor node to detect the leakage and its severity of the piping system. Furthermore, it can reduce the amount of data transmitted to reduce the power consumption then prolong the service life of the designed wireless sensing system. The diagnostic result can be conveniently observed on the mobile device in real time.