Protection of underground gas pipelines from third party damage by on-line monitoring using piezoelectric accelerometers

While it is difficult to detect target signals, online monitoring remains the most reliable method for the protection of underground pipelines from third party damage. In this paper, an acoustic wave propagation model based on data communication by local area network is generated along the gas pipelines to detect any damage and its location along the pipelines. In modelling the wave propagation, auto power spectral density and cross power spectral density processing methods are applied to distinguish damage signals from noises and the number of sensors in accordance with the attenuation coefficient.