Sonic Characterisation of Change in Sewer Networks

水务公司需要在两个关键领域加强信息，以便有效地管理当前和战略性的下水道维护，这与运行和结构条件以及恶化速度密切相关。由于水力超载引起的洪灾可以通过资本投资来解决，因此，随着一项具有严重环境、经济和社会影响的服务的失败，其他原因的洪灾变得越来越重要。在许多情况下，定期维护下水道的运行状况比在结构倒塌时更换它更有效率。公司现在正在寻找减少这些事件的新方法，然而，现有的下水道分析和闭路电视调查方法仍然很耗时且主观。最近，调查人员在排水管道中进行了一系列声学实验，以确定小堵塞的演变。这些初步结果表明，下水道的声学特征可以用来检测大直径管道横截面上微小变化的位置和程度。虽然已经开发了声学仪器来确定狭窄管道(例如乐器)的横截面的变化，但还没有系统的研究来重建真实的下水道管道的横截面轮廓。本项目的目的是开发一种新的实用和高效的声学技术来监测实时下水道管网的运行和结构状况的演变。

Water companies need enhanced information in two key areas to manage the current and strategic maintenance of sewers efficiently, which relates strongly to the operational and structural conditions and the rate of deterioration. As flooding caused by hydraulic overload can be tackled through capital investment, flooding other causes becomes increasingly significant as a failure of a service with heavy environmental, economical and social impacts. In many situations, it is more efficient to maintain the operational condition of a sewer regularly, rather then replace it in the case of structural collapse. Companies are now looking for new ways of reducing these incidents, however, the existing methods of sewer analysis and CCTV survey remain largely time-consuming and subjective.Recently, a series of acoustic experiments has been carried out by the investigators in a drained sewer pipe to identify the evolution of a small blockage. These initial results suggest that the acoustic signature of the sewer can be used to detect the location and extent of a minor change in the cross-section of a large-diameter pipe. Although, acoustic instruments have already been developed to determine variations of the cross-section of narrow pipes (e.g. musical instruments), there have been no systematic studies into the reconstruction of the cross-section profile of a realistic sewer pipe. The purpose of this project is to develop a novel practical and efficient acoustic technique to monitor the evolution of operation and structural conditions in live sewer networks.