Underground PVC/PE water pipe detection system

Abstract

With the development of technology, a lot of underground cables, wires and pipes are buried underneath. There is lot of equipment to detect metal objects, but limited equipment to detect non-metallic objects which are very expensive. The objective of the research was to develop a low cost equipment to detect underground non-metallic pipes in either horizontal or vertical placed positions. Since this type of detection cannot be done using electromagnetic locators, an acoustic method is used to generate continuous-wave (CW) acoustic signal, which is then injected and transmitted throughout the pipe. Afterwards, the transmitted signals were captured using a seismic sensor. The data gathered was used to determine the location of the buried non-metallic pipes. The received signals were amplified, filtered and then differentiated using cross-correlation method. As a result, a reduction in unwanted signals was observed, thereby accurate transmitted signals from the actual underground pipe was captured