Search

The present work deals with the multi-leak diagnosis problem in a branched pipeline configuration as in water distribution systems. Here, it is assumed that the flow rate and pressure head measurements are available upstream and at all delivering points of the network. The proposed Leak Detection and Isolation (LDI) scheme basically involves two essential steps: leak region identification based on flow-rate residuals with a related k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) classifier, and then leak parameter identification (magnitude and position) via the use of the so-called Extended Kalman Filters (EKFs) for each leak based on a simple generic model and fed with pressure head estimations provided by an initial EKF. For the sake of illustration, successful experimental results of a two sequential leak scenario are provided using databases generated by a test bed plant with two branchings built at the Tuxtla Gutiérrez Institute of Technology., We acknowledgment CONACyT for its support via the postdoctoral fellowship 244269 (for the first author) and the National Problems grant PN-2016/3595, but also CIIDETEC-UVM, IRI-UPC, Tecnológico Nacional de México TNM project: 14515.22-P and TURIX-Dynamics Diagnosis and Control Group Tuxtla Gutiérrez for their fruitful collaboration in this research.