Study of the Effect of Leak Size on Flow Characteristics using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

Leak is one of the most common problem faced in transportation of fluid such as oil, water or gas using pipeline. This leak in pipeline should always be identified and located in the minimum duration of its occurrence so that the loss of flowing commodity can be reduced. The most common technique used to detect leak relies on sensing various flow related parameters such as Pressure variation and velocity through pipeline. These techniques detect leak on basis of change in these parameters. This give rise in need to analyze these flow parameters during the occurrence of leak. In this manuscript, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to analyze the changes in flow parameters such as pressure, pressure gradient, outlet velocity and leak mass flow rate due to different size of leak. The results show that the pressure drop and outlet velocity decreases while pressure gradient and leak flow rate increase when size of leak increases. The CFD simulation was conducted on ANSYS FLUENT 2019 R1.