Abstract

This work regards the design of optimization techniques for the purposes of state estimation and control in the framework of inland waterways, often characterized by negligible bottom slopes and large time delays. The derived control-oriented model allows these issues to be handled in a suitable manner. Then, the analogous moving horizon estimation and model predictive control techniques are applied in a centralized manner to estimate the unmeasurable states and fulfill the operational goals, respectively. Finally, the performance of the methodology is tested in simulation by means of a realistic case study based on part of the inland waterways in the north of France. The results show that the proposed methodology is able to guarantee the navigability condition, as well as the other operational goals. This work has been partially funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD) through the projects DEOCS (ref. MINECO DPI2016-76493) and SCAV (ref. MINECO DPI2017-88403-R). This work has also been partially funded by AGAUR of Generalitat de Catalunya through the Advanced Control Systems (SAC) group grant (2017 SGR 482).

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology for leak detection and isolation (LDI) in pipelines based on data fusion from two approaches: a steady-state estimation and an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The proposed method considers only pressure head and flow rate measurements at the pipeline ends, which contain intrinsic sensor and process noise. The LDI system is tested in real-time by using an USB data acquisition device that is implemented in MATLAB environment. The effectiveness of the method is analyzed by considering: online detection, location as well as quantification of non-concurrent leaks at different positions. The leak estimation error average is less than 1% of the flow rate and less than 3% in the leakage position. Furthermore, the incorporation of a steady-state estimation shows that the solution of the LDI problem has improved significantly with respect to the one that only considers the EKF estimation. An experimental analysis was also performed on the effectiveness of the proposed approach for different sampling rates and for different leakage positions Peer Reviewed