Measurement of Valve Leakage Rate using Acoustic

Emission
Watit Kaewwaewnoi*, Asa Prateepasen**, Pakorn Kaewtrakulpong*
*Department of Instrumentation and Control System Engineering
**Department of Production Engineering
King Mongkuts University of Technology Thonburi
Email: kwatit007@yahoo.com, iasaasen@kmutt.ac.th and pakorn.kae@kmutt.ac.th

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a novel method to measure
leakage rate of gas through valve using Acoustic
Emission (AE) technique. A set of various sizes of ball
valve, varied from one to three inches, was tested with a
range of valve-inlet pressure. Leakage rate through valve
was carried out by calculating the pressure difference in a
chamber. An AE sensor was mounted on the case of the
valve to capture the AE signal. The AE signal was then
amplified and filtered and fed into a Vector Signal
Analyzer, model HP 89410A. The sampling rate of the
analyzer was set at 10 MHz. AE parameters which
correlated with leakage rate were identified. AE average
signal level (ASL) and AE root mean square (AErms)
exhibited high correlation with the leakage rate. Finally
an equation to relate the detected AE signal to the leakage
rate at different valve-inlet pressures and valve sizes was
established.
Keywords: Valve Leakage, Leakage Rate Measurement,
Acoustic Emission
1. INTRODUCTION
Leakage of valve in industry such as refineries,
petrochemical and nueclear plant causes high expense in
a large sum annually. In general, valve leakage detecting
using hydrostatic or pneumatic test, which may require
partly or totally shutdown, is normally applied and most
plants decide to schedule the valve checking annually.
However, the leakages may occur before the maintenance
which could cost a huge lost due to contamination and
lowering the efficiency of the instrument and system.
Acoustic Emission (AE) is a Non-Destructive Testing
(NDT) method utilized in a wide variety of applications.
This method was well accepted and commonly found in
industries because of its simplicity and convenience to
use.
In the last decade, the attempt to implement an AE
system to detect valve leakage was studied and developed
by many researchers. Bezn [1] and Joon-Hyun Lee et al
[2] suggested that AErms could be used to determinate
the open and close positions of valves, such as relief and
safety valves, and also to indicate aging and degradation
of check valves in nuclear power plants. Pollock et al [3]
studied the characteristic of acoustic leak signals owing to

the gas leakage through a ball valve in frequency domain.

As a consequence, the correlation between the AE and the
leakage rate was presented. Dickey et al [4] found that the
peak amplitude of AE signal in frequency domain is
independent of leak part or leakage rate but dependent on
transducer response and valve geometry. However, they
did not describe the relationship between AE parameters
and valve leakage rate which is the primary basis for
predicting leakage rate by AE method.
The primary objective of this paper is to present the
relationship between AE parameters and the leakage rate
of valve at various valve sizes and inlet pressures. The
equation utilized to find out the leakage rate at different
valve sizes and inlet pressures was also established.
2. THEORY
2.1. Acoustic Emission
Acoustic emission (AE) is an energy emitted in the
form of transient elastic wave or sound wave within
material. The AE signal is obtained using AE equipment
after the sound wave has been detected and processed
electrically. Generally, the AE signal has a wide
frequency range of 25 kHz to 3 MHz. However, it is
normally analyzed and processed in the frequency range
between 100 kHz to 1 MHz due to high sensitivity.
Source mechanisms of AE signal have been classified
into two classes. One is called the classical sources which
are originated from its macro (such as deformation or
crack) and micro structures (such as slip, and twinning
etc.). The other is called pseudo sources that do not
release the AE directly within the material, but from
external mechanisms, for instance, friction from rotating
bearing and leakage of gas or liquid [5]. In this paper, AE
signal is generated by a pseudo source received from gas
leakage through
poorly seated ball valves of three
different sizes. The type of this AE signal is a continuous
AE signal since the beginning and the end of the signal
(in time domain) cannot be identified.
2.2. Leakage Mechanism
The basic mechanism generating AE signals in a
leaking valve is the decay of turbulence resulting from
the high pressure, high velocity of fluid flow. The degree
of turbulence is predicted by the Reynolds number (R)
defined as [3]

R=

(1)

where is the density, the flow velocity, r the radius of

flow path and the viscosity. It has been found that the
onset of turbulence occurs when the Reynolds number is
between 1,000 and 10,000 giving leakage produce an
acoustic emission. The actual detection of the leakage
depends on the flow rate as this factor decides the energy
contents of the leak signal. Then, a volumetric flow rate
(V) can be calculated by Poiseuille formula which can be
written as [3]

V =

pr 4
8 L

Emission activity is attributed to rapid releases of energy

in the material, the energy content of the acoustic
emission signal is related to this energy release. AErms
can be defined as

1
AErms =
T

t0 +T

Fig. 1: The best position of AE sensor on valves.

2.3. AE System and Parameters
Typical AE system comprises of several AE
electronic modules such as AE sensors, preamplifiers,
filters, amplifiers, and a data acquisition system [6]. AE
sensors are generally piezoelectric (PZT) devices that
transform elastic waves into electrical signals. To obtain
the best leakage measurement system, appropriate signal
conditioning and processing is required. Furthermore,
signal to noise ratio and suitable AE parameters need to
be prudently considered.
A proper AE sensor must to be appropriately selected
to receive the highest sensitivity. The suitable
preamplifier level is based on signal source level and the
saturation limits of the AE system. In order to eliminate
back ground noise, a band-pass filter operated in the
range of 100 kHz to 400 kHz [3] is normally used.
For continuous AE signal, the most frequently used
AE parameters are the average energy (AErms) and the
Average Signal Level (ASL). The AErms is the root
mean square value of the AE signal. Since Acoustic

t0

(n) (3)

n =1

where v is the voltage signal from an AE sensor, t0 the

initial time, T the integration time of the signal, and N the
number of discrete AE data within the interval T.
Another AE parameter which is often used is the
Average Signal Level (ASL) defined as

(2)

where p is the differential pressure across the leakage

area which has length L and radius r. The AE signal of
leaking valve is more obviously identified on the
downstream side of a valve. This is due to the turbulence
created when the gas flows from the high pressure side,
through the leakage area to the low pressure side. Hence,
AE sensors should be located at the downstream side of
the valves [5]. The best mounting position of AE sensor
on a valve is shown in Fig. 1.

1
N

v 2 (t )dt =

ASLv =

1
T

( t0 +T )

v(t )dt =

t0

ASLdB = 20 log

1
N

v ( n)

(4)

n =1

ASLv
1

(5)

where ASLv is an average signal level in volts and ASLdB

an average signal level in decibel (dB).
3. EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
The experimental set-up is illustrated in Fig. 2. Three
sizes of the ball valve which are 1, 2 and 3 inches in
diameter were used in our experiment. Air was selected
instead of gas due to its ease of use and safety. The level
of the inlet pressure was supplied by an air compressor
and controlled by a regulator. A pressure gauge with a
resolution of 0.5 bar with an air filter was connected to a
pipe. The size of the pipe was also changed to fit with the
size of each valve. The valve inlet pressure was varied
from 1 to 5 bars with an increment of 2 bars. As
mentioned earlier, the volumetric flow rate can be
computed using the equation (2). However, to simplify
the measurement of the leakage rate, a known-volume
chamber was connected to the end of the valve. The
leakage rate can be calculated from differential pressure
of the chamber from the equation [7]

Q =V

(P / P1 )
T

(6)

where Q is the leakage rate (ml/sec), V the volume of the

chamber, T the time span of the testing, P the pressure
increased over the time T, and P1 the system pressure.
A wide band AE sensor of type WD was initially
selected to investigate the frequency contents of the AE
signal. It was found that, in the frequency domain, the
spectrum of AE leak signal showed an outstanding peak
at the frequency range of 100-200 kHz. Hereafter, an AE
sensor of type R15 which has the resonant frequency at
150 kHz was chosen instead of the model WD in order to
enhance the sensitivity of leakage detection. The
electrical signal obtained from the R15 was then
amplified by an amplifier with a gain of 60 dB. A band
pass filter with a pass band ranging from 100 to 300 kHz
was integrated to the preamplifier to remove electrical

and mechanical noises. Then the signal was sent to a real

time signal analyzer, LOCAN 320 and a Hewlett Packard
Vector Signal Analyzer, HP 89410A. The main gain of
LOCAN 320 was set at 20 dB and the sampling rate of
HP 89410A is set at 10 MHz. The time domain signal
contains 978-line in a period of 381.25 sec whereas the
frequency domain contains 401-line AErms spectrum
spanning from 0 to 1 MHz. The result was recorded using
the average value over 500 consecutive spectra in the
frequency domain. The data in both time and frequency
domains was kept and used to calculate AErms and ASL.
Fig. 3: Typical AE signal in time domain

Fig. 2: The schematic diagram of experimental set-up.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The typical AE signal in time domain received from
the AE sensor, model R15, is shown in Fig. 3. It is clearly
a signal of continuous type. The spectra in the frequency
domain of various leakage rates are presented in Fig. 4.
It was found that the amplitude of the signal
increased with the leakage rate. These results affirmed the
ability of AE approach to detect the leakage in valves.
The correlation between AE parameters and the leakage
rate was also studied. The relation between the leakage
rate (ml/sec) and AErms (mV) of the valve size of 1 inch
at three different pressures is shown in Fig. 5. The
AErms rapidly increases at low leakage rates and then
slow down at high rates. The AErms also increases with
pressure. The relation between the leakage rate and ASL
is depicted in Fig.6 exhibiting the same trend. In addition,
the results (not shown here due to limited space) provided
similar trend for the valves of size 2 and 3 inches. It can
be explained that the flow velocity of leak air increase
with value inlet pressure. Consequently the Reynolds
number is also increased as shown in equation (1). This
causes the turbulence flow which is the source of
Acoustic Emission wave.

Fig. 4: Frequency spectrum of AE signal at different

leakage rates.

Fig. 5: Relationship between AErms and leakage rates of

1 inch ball valve at different pressures.

Fig. 6: Relationship between ASL and leakage rates of 1

inch ball valve at different pressures.
The relationship between AE parameters (AErms and
ASL) and the leakage rate of different valve sizes are

illustrated in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 respectively. Analogous

experiments using inlet pressures at 1 and 3 bars also
revealed similar correlation; however, AE signal reduced
with the size of valve. The same reason as mentioned
above, the flow velocity reduces with the increase in size
of the value.

Fig. 7: Relationship between AErms and leakage rates of

different valve sizes at P = 5 bar.

Fig. 8: Relationship between ASL and leakage rates of

different valve sizes at P = 5 bar.
It can be concluded that the important parameters
which effect AE signal are valve inlet pressure, valve size
and the leakage rate. In order to implement an AE
inspection system to measure the leakage rate, an
equation to determine the leakage rate by AE parameters
was established as
log(Q ) = 11.627log( ASL) - 0.335log( P) + 0.973log( S )
20.814
(7 )
and
log(Q ) = 1.782 log( AErms ) 0.543 log( P) + 0.320 log( S )
3.440
(8)
where Q is the leakage rate in ml/sec, P the inlet pressure
in bars and S the valve size in inches.
From equation (7), the error rate of prediction is
between 9.2 and 29.7% for the range of the leakage rate
from 40 to 100 ml/sec and equation (8) is between 8.13
and 59.652% at the same range.

5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a novel leakage measurement system
using AE inspection was presented. Analyzing the AE
signal generated from the leakage allowed us to choose
proper AE sensors, filtering methods and to improve the
signal to noise ratio. An AE sensor with resonant
frequency of 150 kHz was selected since its frequency
response covered the frequency range of the leakage. A
number of experiments were conducted to demonstrate
the ability to use AE parameters in detecting leakage rate
of different valve sizes and inlet pressures. It was found
that the AE activities increased with the leakage rate, the
inlet pressure but diminished with the valve size. An
expression to explain the relationship between these
parameters was also introduced in this work. Finally, it
can be concluded that the AE technique can be used to
detect valve leakage at high sensitivity.
6. REFERENCES
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Analysis of Acoustic Emission Signals for
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[3] A.A. Pollock and S.Y.S. Hsu, Leak Detection Using
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Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 237-243, 1982.
[4] J. Dickey, J. Dimmick, and P.M. Moore, Acoustic
Measurement of Valve Leakage Rates, Material
Evaluation, Vol. 36, pp. 67-77, 1978.
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American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc.,
2nd ed, Columbus, Ohio, 1987, pp. 12, 541.
[6] The American Society for Testing and Materials,
Annual Book of ASTM Standards; Volume 03.03,
Standard E750-88 Standard Practice for Characterizing Acoustic emission Instrument, Philadelphia,
PA, 1993.
[7] R.A. Jensen and A.M. Agnone, A New Method to
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