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Leaks in HDPE Plastic Water Pipes: Detection

and Location by Out-Pipe Measurements
Mauro N. Efchi and Agustin E. Espindola

National Technological University - Paraná Regional School of Engineering

Abstract A big percentage of the water wasted worldwide is caused by leaks in water pipes. To help reduce waste water caused
by active leaks, this work proposes a technique (out-pipe measurements) by means of which it is possible to detect and locate
leaks in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic water pipes. To analyze the effectiveness of this technique to detect and locate
water pipes leaks, a description of the operation of this technique and the transducers used in it, called accelerometers and
hydrophones, is carried out. In this technique, these measuring instruments are placed outside the pipes. The analysis of previous
research studies highlights the favorable results of the use of this technique.

Index Terms— HDPE plastic water pipes, out-pipe measurements, pipe leaks detection.
aim, the differences between these techniques depend on the
I. INTRODUCTION 1 kind of plastic used for the water pipes and the forms to

I t is well known that water is a fundamental natural obtain the measurements. To limit the scope of this project,
resource for the development of living beings. However, the objective of this paper is to describe and analyze one of
the scarcity of this valuable resource is a problem that these techniques: out-pipe measurements to detect leaks in
increasingly affects the world and brings many negative HDPE plastic water pipes.
consequences for life. A big percentage of water wasted, To achieve this aim, this paper is organized as follows.
which frequently exceeds 30% [1], is born of the water pipe The second section explains the technique in general. Section
networks, due to the fact that some of these pipes leak. To 3 is about the components used and their properties. The
deal with this problem, it is necessary to repair said pipes in operation in detail of the technique is addressed in Section 4.
a short time, which is why detecting and locating leaks in the The fifth section is based on the advantages and
water pipes emerge as an urgent need. disadvantages of out-pipe measurements. The main concepts
Reducing water waste as well as providing access to clean about this technique are rounded up in the conclusion.
water are part of both the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE) Challenges and the United Nations' Sustainable
Development Goals. Water care is related to the NAE II. TECHNIQUE IN GENERAL
Challenges called “Restore and improve urban The technique that will be analyzed along this paper is out-
infrastructure" and "Providing access to drinking water"[2], pipe measurements. The bases of the technique consist in the
and the UN's SDG named "Clean water and sanitation"[3]. monitoring of vibro-acoustic phenomena generated by active
The NAE’s Challenges highlight the importance of having leaks. In other words, when there are leaks in water pipes,
an effective water distribution network, whereas the SDG water produces a noise and vibration when flowing through
refers to the need for people to have access to drinking water. them. These characteristics produced are detected by
To contribute with the challenges and goal mentioned in transducers [1]. By means of this technique it is possible to
the previous paragraph, it is necessary to guarantee water find leaks almost immediately so as to allow its repair or
access by means of infrastructure improvement. A way to do replacement of the broken pipe, in order to waste the least
it is by locating leaks in water pipes. Although there are amount of water possible.
multiple measuring techniques that can be used to fulfill this The main characteristic of this technique is that the

1
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals frameworks.
Mauro Efchi is an Electronics Engineering student at UTN FRP: If sources have not been well paraphrased or credited, it might
mauroefchi@alu.frp.utn.edu.ar. Agustin Espindola is an Electronics be due to students’ developing intercultural communicative
Engineering student at UTN FRP: agustinespindola@alu.frp.utn.edu.ar. competence rather than a conscious intention to plagiarize a
The present manuscript is part of the research activities in the text. Should the reader have any questions regarding this
Inglés II lesson at Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, work, please contact Graciela Yugdar Tófalo, Senior Lecturer,
Facultad Regional Paraná. Students are asked to research into at gyugdar@frp.utn.edu.ar
a topic so as to shed light on a topic of their interest within the
National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges or the
measurements will be obtained with a transducer placed
outside the water pipe. In this way, it is not necessary to
insert any transducer inside the water pipe, which facilitates
the implementation and does not need constant location of
the transducer, which is necessary if the measurements are
obtained inside the pipe. In addition, to verify that the
technique works correctly, the implementation is performed
in a test bench to later develop it in a real water pipe network.
To carry out this technique the support of a variety of
components is necessary. These are plastic water pipes of
high-density polyethylene (HDPE), accelerometers,
hydrophones and other components that will be essential to
mount a test bench. These components are described in detail
in the following sections.
III. COMPONENTS USED AND THEIR PROPERTIES
This section describes the principal properties of the
components that are used in this project for the test bench or
the measuring instruments. The section is subdivided into
two. The first one mentions the kind of plastic of the tubes
(PVC and HDPE plastic pipes) that will be utilized and the
last one describes the type of transducers (transducers as
hydrophones and accelerometers) that are used in this
technique.
A. Plastic water pipes
Along this paper, two types of plastic are mentioned:
HDPE and PVC. HDPE stands for high-density polyethylene
and PVC stands for polyvinyl chloride. Both types of plastic
are commonly used in pipelines. These materials have the
same properties such as corrosion resistance and toughness.
However, the difference between these materials is that the
HDPE is flexible and more resistant to high temperatures
than PVC [4]. For this reason, the HDPE pipes are used in
the water pipe networks and the PVC pipes are utilized for
water mains.
B. Transducers
A transducer is a device through which a change from one
type of energy to another one occurs [5]. This change of
energy can be observed in the technique analyzed in this
paper. The acoustic energy coming from the sound vibrations
produced by active leaks is transformed into electrical energy
which is understood as voltage variations. In this paper, only
two different types of transducing devices will be described:
hydrophones and accelerometers.
Hydrophone
Hydrophone is a type of transducer that is used to "detect
the pressure variations of acoustic signals and noise in the
water and produce an output voltage proportional to the
pressure" [5, p.152]. Moreover, this device generates a noise
voltage owing to thermal agitation on internal resistors. In
terms of the principles of operation of this device, the free-
field voltage sensitivity of a hydrophone can be defined as
“the ratio of the open circuit voltage amplitude to the free-
field pressure amplitude of an incident plane sound wave”
[5, p.153].
Hydrophones can be classified as small and large devices.
According to [5, p.162] “a small hydrophone does not disturb
the sound field, and thus, measures the pressure that would
exist if it were not present. A large hydrophone, or a small
hydrophone in a large mounting structure, will change the
pressure field”. Currently, the use of circular, cylindrical, and
spherical hydrophones is common because they have special
characteristics such as high sensitivity, wide-band smooth,
low impedance, good hydrostatic pressure capability and
simplicity [5].
Accelerometer
As it has been mentioned before, an accelerometer is another
type of transducer that, depending on the acceleration
measurement, can be divided into altern current response
(AC-response) and direct current response (DC-response).
The altern current is defined as the electric flow that occurs
in both directions alternately; first it goes one way and then
returns the other way. The direct current is the flow of
electric current that can only work in one direction, from an
emitter to a receiver. The AC-response is used to measure
dynamic events because the output is AC coupled. Instead,
the DC-response one has the characteristic of being DC
coupled and can respond down to zero Hertz. For this reason,
it can be used to measure static and dynamic acceleration [6].
This paper will refer to the AC accelerometer, which uses
piezoelectric elements for their sensing mechanism due to
the fact that it has a “very wide temperature range, broad
dynamic range, and wide bandwidth” [6]. Also, this device
has high impedance and is very small footprint, so it is
adequate for dynamic measurements in lightweight
structures.
IV. OPERATION OF THE TECHNIQUE
After detailing the properties of components in the
previous section, now, this paper will address two issues,
namely, test bench for taking measurements outside of the
pipe and the technique performance. The measurements are
very important to know how the implementation of the
technique works and the conditions in which it can function.
Also, the implementation of this technique in test bench is
required to be able to carry out all the necessary tests to know
if the technique works accurately. Currently, this technique
is widely used, but it has only been carried out in some
countries, among which is Israel. In this section there are two
subsections: Test Bench and Technique Performance.
A. Test Bench
As mentioned in the Section II, a test bench is necessary
for the implementation of this technique. It is made up of a
“one polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe with outer diameter of
90 mm (DN 90) (which) is used as the water main. Several
plastic pipes of smaller diameter (DN 32) are connected to
the larger one to model customer service pipes. Two-way
shut-off valves are installed at both extremities of each
service pipe, inside manholes. All the pipelines are buried
> THIS IS AN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENGINEERING STUDENT PAPER. READERS MAY MAKE
USE OF THIS MATERIAL AT THEIR OWN DISCRETION<
under approximately 0.5 m of soil. The rig is fed by a
pressure tank, which permits regulation of water pressure.
All measurements (are) performed on a HDPE pipe with a
length of 28 m” [1, p.2]. A test bench diagram can be seen
in Figure 1.
Fig. 1. Test bench diagram
To simulate the leaks, longitudinal cuts are made in the
water pipe due to the fact that these damages are the most
common kind of cracks in HDPE pipes. In this way, the
pipe are cut in five different parts. Each of these cuts has a
length of 20 mm. The leak rate estimated of each leak
generates a leaking flow of approximately 200 L/h in
typical network functioning conditions [1].
Fig. 2. Buried pipeline diagram
B. Technique performance
This subsection refers to the way each component is used.
Taking measurements is done as follows: the accelerometer
is used to measure vibrations of the leak; the hydrophone
connects directly to the threaded port of the terminal valve,
thus preventing any water flow from exiting the valve [1].
This way of locating the transducer is presented in Fig. 1. It
should be clear that, for the hydrophone to take precise
measurements, measures without leaks should be taken first
to for this transducer to recognize ambient noise and, then,
measures with one active leak at a time are taken to ensure
accuracy.
V. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
After knowing how the technique works, relevant aspects
arise that direct the effectiveness that out-pipe measurements
have on HDPE pipes has, according to a research study
carried out by Martini, Rivola and Troncossi. These aspects
are subdivided into two: advantages and disadvantages of
this technique using two accelerometers, a radial and an axial
one, and a hydrophone.
Among the advantages, it can be mentioned that the use of
hydrophone allows to hear clearly the noise generated by the
farthest leaks, so it had excellent reliability [1].
3
The accelerometers, in turn, also yield good results.
Although neither of the two accelerometers detect distant
leaks, the axial accelerometer has a greater detection range.
Despite the fact that the accelerometers are not as effective
as the hydrophone, they are still useful for detecting leaks
since their detection range should be adequate for most pipes
in the water network. The advantage of accelerometers over
hydrophones is that they are cheaper. The downside is that
they are less accurate [1].
VI. CONCLUSION
The research studies analyzed for this paper make
reference to the positive results of using out-pipe
measurements to detect water leaks in HDPE pipes. It can
also be mentioned that the effectiveness of leak detection is
proportional to the distance at which it is located. In other
words, the further the transducer is from the leak, the more
difficult it is to detect.
Regarding the components, the main advantages have
been mentioned in section 5. It can also be highlighted that,
although the hydrophone has better performance, it is more
expensive than the accelerometer. However, the fact that the
accelerometer is cheaper does not prevent it from fulfilling
its objective and does not make it less important to achieve
the development of the technique in general.
As mentioned before, this technique helps prevent as
much water from being wasted due to active leaks. Although
a single leak may seem like a minor and irrelevant problem,
when the number of leaks is magnified, water waste is a huge
problem for the planet. To understand this impact, it is
necessary to take into account the wasted water flow from a
single 20 mm (200L / h) leak, which has been mentioned
above. It must also be borne in mind that the wasted water is
not only due to leaks and this is only one of the factors
causing the problem. If this factor is added to the water waste
generated directly by humans, the water crisis has an even
greater impact on the environment. Finally, it should be
stated that, although this technique will not solve the problem
completely, it contributes to its solution, thus fulfilling the
NAE challenge and the UN’s SDG by improving water
infrastructure and, therefore, guaranteeing access to drinking
water.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Martini, M. Troncossi and A. Rivola. (2017).
“Vibroacoustic Measurements for Detecting Water Leaks in
Buried Small-Diameter Plastic Pipes,”. J. Pipeline Syst.
Eng.Pract., 8(4). Accessed on Sept.4, 2021 [Online]. Available:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319095400_Vibroaco
ustic_Measurements_for_Detecting_Water_Leaks_in_Buried_
Small-Diameter_Plastic_Pipes
[2] National Academy of Engineering (2008). NAE Grand
Challenges for Engineering. [Online]. Accessed on: Dec. 14,
2021. Available:
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/challenges.aspx
[3] United Nations (2015). Sustainable Development Goals.
[Online]. Accessed on: Dec. 14, 2021. Available:
https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals
[4] JE van Zyl, Introduction to Operation and Maintenance of
Water Distribution Systems, South Africa: Water Research
Commission, 2014. Accessed on: Sept. 20, 2021. [Online].
Available:
https://www.pseau.org/outils/ouvrages/wrc_introduction_to_op
eration_and_maintenance_of_water_distribution_systems_2014
.pdf
[5] C. H. Sherman and J. L. Butler (2007). “Transducers and
Arrays for Underwater Sound”. Accessed on: Sept. 20, 2021.
[Online]. Available: https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-0-387-
33139-3.
[6] TE Connectivity. (2017). “Choosing the Right Type of
Accelerometer”. Accessed on: Sept. 20, 2021. [Online].
Available: https://www.te.com/content/dam/te-
com/documents/sensors/global/choosing-the-right-
accelerometer-white-paper.pdf