Water pipeline monitoring system using vibration sensor

Abstract

This paper presents a development of water pipeline monitoring system using vibration sensor. The MPU6050 sensor is selected to measure the vibration occurred along the pipes. In this study, the water pipeline used is high pressure pipe, an inch of the Acrylonitrille Butadience Styrene (ABS) pipe size with 10 meters length. The Arduino controller board then processes the vibration data from the accelerometer sensor and transmits (Tx) the data over wireless ZigBee networks at one second ellipse time. The water pipeline system is examined based on two states, which are (i) no pipe leakage, and (ii) a 1mm size of pipe leakage. In our experiments, the pressure is varied for three different levels, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 kgf/cm2. Results show that at water pressure of a 0.6 kgf/cm2 a significant difference in vibration signal is demonstrated between no pipe leakage and 1mm size of pipe leakage. However, this is not the case for the other two water pressure of 0.8 and 1.0 kgf/cm2 in which the vibration signals achieved are similar for both pipe leakage and normal pipe. This is due to the fact that high water pressure resulted to low water flow and thus the vibration of the pipe is not that considerable when the pipe leaks.