Leak Detection with Gravity: Analog Water Pressure Sensor

Support Product Questions
1

Hi, I am working on a project to detect leaks in a water distribution line by monitoring the fluctuations in pressure.
I was wondering if Gravity: Analog Water Pressure Sensor is the right sensor to go for. Would it be possible to combine the sensor with a DFRobot Gravity IO Expansion Shield
and an Arduino board to achieve this?

2

We probably need a bit more information here. There’s multiple ways on doing it but some of them depend on exactly what you’re trying to do and what your system looks like. Some diagrams would be helpful if you have them.

  1. Are you measuring a single water distribution line?
  2. Is the just one sensor? If yes, where is it placed?
  3. For multiple sensors, where are they placed?
  4. What pressure and flow rates are involved?
  5. Is it pump driven or gravity fed from a tank?
  6. Is the system always consistent? If it changes, what changes?
  7. Are you trying to sense? A loss of liquid flow or a pressure drop?
  8. What are the sizes of the pipes?

Any additional information you can supply will help.

3

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the reply.
I am trying to show that a burst event in a single pipeline supplying pressurized water can be detected by analyzing the water pressure fluctuation in the line.

  1. Yes, I am measuring a single water distribution line.
  2. Yes, it is just one sensor place in the middle of a 3 m long pipeline. An outlet is placed at 1.5 meters away from the sensor and will be opened suddenly to mimic a burst event.
  3. NA
  4. The pressure inside the pipeline is around .4 MPa, and assuming the water is stationary for the first experiment.
  5. The water is sourced form a pipeline, which I think is gravity fed to maintain pressure.
  6. Yes it is consistent for this part of the experiment.
  7. Both. Pressure drops can be due to various reasons but I am trying to identify the particular type of drop caused due to a burst event.
  8. It is a 1 1/4’’ pipeline at this stage.

I am wondering if this particular sensor : https://core-electronics.com.au/gravity-analog-water-pressure-sensor.html , would serve my purpose.

Thanks again for your time, if you could just direct me where to look I’ll try and figure out the rest.

4

You should be OK with this sensor. It’s at the lower end of it’s range but still more than enough to give you a good reading at 0.4MPa but it may be on the low side if you need to measure variations at lower pressures (e.g. 0.1MPa). Also keep in mind that the accurancy is stated as 0.5-1.0% of full-scale or roughly 0.008-0.016MPa (8-16kPa).

If your looking at pressure waves to determine if it’s a pipe burst or just a valve opening these sensors have a 2mS response time. You might want to check if it’s fast enough to pick up any pressure waves that you might want to detect.

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