1 Introduction
With the development of urbanisation in past decades, the component like pipe has become a necessary means of liquid and gas transportation. The issue of plumbing leakage is a widespread concern in both industry and academy due to its social, environmental and economic utility. It has been estimated that, in mainland China, current direct economic losses caused by underground pipe network leaks exceed 200 billion Yuan (approximately 22.65 billion pound sterling), sometimes the pipe leakage might cause unexpected major source of hidden danger not only for damaging urban biological environment and the security of people's lives and properties. The latest research of the ‘track and trace’ technology for buried pipelines, which is widely used in the transportation of liquid and gas media such as crude oil and natural gas, is being widely discussed and studied extensively. Acoustic detection methods has attracted more attention because of such non-destructive evaluation does not directly destroy the structure of the original piping system [
1‐
8]. When the leaking of the pipeline happened, the high-pressure fluid in the pipe will be pressured out of the pipeline and cause unavoidable noise, The acoustic leak detection method is used to detect the events of leaks in different locations of the pipeline, using cross-correlation technique to estimate the delay of leakage noise between two measuring points, then the location of leakage would be calculated [
9]. The effectiveness of these methods much depends on the rationality of the selection of the propagation characteristic parameters of the dominant wave in the pipeline.
The studies of the acoustic characteristics and propagation mechanism of pipes is developed with pipe leak detection. At present, the acoustic leak detection and location of pipelines are usually carried out by time delay estimation method, which depends strongly on wave propagation characteristics. The early research was mainly to solve the wave equation in thin-walled shell pipe, in which the external medium outside pipes is considered vacuum. Fuller, et al. [
10] derived the propagation characteristics of
n = 0 wave within elastic fluid-filled pipes in vacuo defined as “hard” and “soft” shells, then the energy distribution of radial input force and internal pressure fluctuation under various waveforms is studied theoretically [
11]. Xu et al. [
12] studied the vibration propagation characteristics of liquid filling pipes in a vacuum environment. Pinnington et al. [
13] established an acoustic propagation model of cast iron pipes without considering the dispersion characteristics, after that, studied the
n = 0 wave propagation characteristic and transfer equation of the pressurised pipes [
14,
15]. With the development of pipe research, the influence of the medium around the pipes has gradually attracted people's attention. Sinha et al. [
16] studied the numerical results of acoustic wave propagation characteristics of fluid-filled pipes in infinite fluid. Greenspon [
17] presented the axisymmetric vibration of thick-wall and thin-walled liquid-filled pipes in water medium. Long et al. [
18] put forward a model of acoustic velocity dispersion in the process of acoustic vibration signal propagation and verified by experiments. Zhang, et al. [
19] proposed a calculation model for sound velocity under different pipeline embedding conditions. Muggleton et al. [
20‐
22] analysed the propagation characteristics of fluid-dominated axisymmetric waves (
s = 1,
n = 0) in filled buried pipes. Gao et al. [
23,
24] developed a general expression for the fluid-dominated wavenumber in a thin-walled fluid-filled pipe surrounded by a layered elastic soil, and the influence of load effect on elastic medium around pipeline is considered. Kalkowski et al. [
25] present a multi-wave model for propagation in axisymmetric fluid-filled waveguides based on the semi-analytical finite elements. Yan et al. [
26] developed an experimental investigation for mapping and locating pipe leakage employing the image fusion of ground surface vibration.
Current research studies reveal that at low frequencies, the fluid-dominated axisymmetric wave is not only the main carrying waveform of the vibration energy within the buried fluid-filled pipe, but also is an effective signal component which can be used for pipe leakage inspection. This waveform corresponds to the breathing mode of the pipeline, and the current researches on the problem are mainly focused on the metal pipeline. Due to the flexibility of the plastic pipe, the coupling between the pipe and the surrounding medium (mainly soil) is significant, making the influence of the acoustic wave propagation speed and the damping characteristics of the surrounding medium on the energy attenuation more complicated. However, such coupling effect has not been properly addressed in the past; especially the actual contact strength of the pipe-medium interface cannot be considered. With the large-scale use of plastic pipes and the frequent leakage hazards in China’s urbanisation construction, it is urgent to carry out related research to avoid unnecessary costs.
In this paper, the coupling vibration equation of “soil-pipe-fluid” is derived in detail, the acoustic wave propagation characteristic model of the buried pipeline is established, and the shear effect of the medium outside the pipe and the shear effect of the interface between the pipe and the medium on the axisymmetric wave of the fluid dominant are discussed.
3 Wave Characteristic
For the
s=1 wavenumber in buried fluid-filled pipes,
\(k_{1}^{2} \gg k_{L}^{2}\), so
\((k_{1} a)^{2} \gg \Omega^{2}\). When the frequency is low,
\(k_{fs}^{r} \to 0\). According to the properties of Bessel functions,
\(\chi \to 0\),
\(\frac{{J_{0} (\chi )}}{{J_{0}^{\prime } (\chi )}} \approx - \frac{2}{\chi }\). Then the fluid loading term,
FL, can be simplified as
$$FL = - 2\frac{{\rho_{f} }}{{\rho_{p} }}\frac{a}{h}\frac{{\Omega^{2} }}{{(k_{f}^{2} - k_{s}^{2} )a^{2} }}.$$
(25)
Substituting Eq. (
25) into Eq. (
24) gives
$$k_{1}^{2} = k_{f}^{2} (1 + \frac{\beta }{{1 - \Omega^{2} + \alpha }}),$$
(26)
where,
$$\left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}l} {\alpha = - SL_{22} - \frac{{[\nu_{p} + iSL_{12} /k_{1} a][\nu_{p} - i\xi SL_{21} /k_{1} a]}}{{1 - \xi SL_{11} /k_{1} a}},} \hfill \\ {\beta = 2\frac{a}{h}\left( {\frac{{1 - \nu_{p}^{2} }}{{E_{P} }}} \right)B_{f} {,}} \hfill \\ \end{array} } \right.$$
(27)
where
\(\alpha\) stands for the surrounding medium loading and pipe parameters which can be used to evaluate the influence of soil load on the pipe wall displacement.
\(\beta\) refers to fluid and pipe parameters which can be used to evaluate the influence of fluid load on the pipe wall displacement. By means of a complex modulus of elasticity
Ep (
\(\alpha\) and
\(\beta\) always complex), it is found from Eq. (
26) that
k1 is always complex indicating the
s = 1 wave decays as it propagates. Then
\(\alpha\) and
\(\beta\) are described as the measures of the loading effects of surrounding medium and fluid on the pipe wall respectively. By Eq. (
27),
\(\beta\) can be obtained directly, but
\(\alpha\) which is related to the unknown wavenumber
k1 cannot be solved directly. When the pipe is placed in a different medium, the equations can be simplified by boundary conditions.
On the condition of lubrication contact, the contact coefficient
\(\xi = 0\), the measure of the loading effects of the surrounding medium
\(\alpha = - \nu_{p}^{2} - SL_{22} - i\nu_{p} SL_{12} /k_{1} a\), then Eq. (
24) can be written as
$$k_{1}^{2} = k_{f}^{2} (1 + \frac{\beta }{{1 - \Omega^{2} - \nu_{p}^{2} - SL_{22} - i\nu_{p} SL_{12} /k_{1} a}}).$$
(28)
It can be seen from Eq. (
28) that the propagation of
k1 wave will be delayed as it propagates caused by the effect of the pipe wall (i.e., a complex
\(\beta\)) and additional damping of the surrounding medium (i.e., a complex
\(\alpha\)), although there is no frictional damping between pipe and surrounding medium.
3.2 Pipe in Non-Viscous Liquids
For non-viscous liquids, the shear modulus
\(\mu_{m} = 0\), contact coefficient
\(\xi = 0\), as a result, the lame coefficient
\(\lambda_{m} = B_{m}\), the shear wavenumber
\(k_{r} \to \infty\), and
\(\mu_{m} k_{r}^{2} = \omega^{2} \rho_{m}\). Then the surrounding medium loading matrix
SL can be simplified as
\(SL_{11} = SL_{12} = 0\). In this case, the measure of the loading effects of the surrounding fluid reduces to
\(\alpha = - \nu_{p}^{2} - SL_{22}\). Eq. (
24) can be rewritten as
$$k_{1}^{2} = k_{f}^{2} (1 + \frac{\beta }{{1 - \Omega^{2} - \nu_{p}^{2} - SL_{22} }}),$$
(29)
where
\(SL_{22} = - \frac{{\rho_{m} }}{{\rho_{p} }}\frac{{a^{2} }}{h}\frac{{k_{L}^{2} }}{{k_{d1}^{r} }}\frac{{H_{0} (k_{d1}^{r} a)}}{{H^{\prime}_{0} (k_{d1}^{r} a)}}\). Since
\(SL_{22}\) is a function of the complex
k1,
\(\alpha\) is a complex value. So,
s1 wave attenuation is attributed to both material losses along the pipe wall (i.e., a complex
\(\beta\)) and radiation losses due to the added damping of the surrounding medium (i.e., a complex
α).
3.3 Pie in Air
For an air medium, the loading effects of air on the pipe wall can be neglected, the contact coefficient is considered zero. Then,
T = 0,
SL = 0, and
\(\alpha = - \nu_{p}^{2}\). Eq. (
24) can be expressed are consistent with Ref. [
13]:
$$k_{1}^{2} = k_{f}^{2} (1 + \frac{\beta }{{1 - \Omega^{2} - \nu_{p}^{2} }}).$$
(30)
At low frequency,
\(\Omega^{2} \ll 1\), and
\({\text{Re}} (\beta ) \gg 1\), then
\(k_{1}^{2} > k_{f}^{2}\). And that means the wave speed of the
s = 1 wave will be significantly lower than that of the free wave. In Eq. (
30), the imaginary part only exists in
\(\beta\), so the wave attenuation is only due to losses within the pipe wall.
Compared to the equation from Eq. (
26) to Eq. (
30), it can be seen that, if the real part of
\(\alpha\) less than zero,
\({\text{Re}}(\alpha ) < 0\), external loads of surrounding medium act as additional mass, and the wavenumber will increase compared to the in-air value; Contrarily, if the real part of
\(\alpha\) more than zero,
\({\text{Re}}(\alpha ) > 0\), external loads of surrounding medium act as additional stiffness, and the wavenumber will decrease relative to the in-air case.