Research on the vibration response characteristics of PE gas pipeline aimed for third-party damage monitoring

Third-party damage (TPD) incidents account for over 73% in China, becoming the primary cause of urban buried gas pipeline disruption. Therefore, real-time monitoring of TPD holds significance. This passage introduces a novel method for third-party damage monitoring of urban gas pipeline networks without excavation. The approach involves installing acoustic sensors in the pipeline to detect abnormal signals caused by construction activities. While the effectiveness of this method has been confirmed for buried steel pipelines, the propagation patterns, frequency characteristics, and the impact of fluid flow within PE pipelines remain unclear. To this end, this study explores these issues through experiments and simulations. According to the research, sound waves are the primary mode of signal propagation. The impact of gas pressure can be disregarded, but if the flow is reversed, the signal will weaken by 26%. The signal energy is concentrated in the 0–2 kHz range, decreasing exponentially as the distance increases. Moreover, a positive linear correlation exists between the signal energy and the load size to the power of 0.1. This research provides theoretical support for studying third-party damage monitoring technology and identifying and localizing damage types.