Two Simultaneous Leaks Isolation in a Pipeline by Transient Responses

This paper presents a procedure to isolate two simultaneous leaks in a pipeline using the parameter estimation framework with a reduction in the research interval of the four unknown parameters when only pressure and flow rate are measured at the extremes of the line. Considering the steady state parameter Zeqwhich characterizes the subset of two indistinguishable leaks, a family of dynamic models with constraints is obtained. This family, called F, allows to reformulate in a simple way the leaks identification task in which diverse off-line optimization algorithms can be used to solve it. The formulation of the optimization task with constraints is the main contribution of this work. The advantages of the family F in term of the search interval reduction are discussed using the parameters of a water pilot pipeline of 135m long in which the L2norm of the upstream flow error is minimized using real data.