Hyperboloidal Boiler Tube Leakage Location Based on Quaternary Acoustic Array

Peng Wang, Liansuo An, Genshan Jiang, Guoqing Shen and Jie Shi

Thermal Energy and Power Engineering School, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China wangpeng56401126@126.com

Abstract

The main requirement of a modern power plant is an efficient and reliable operation; hence, the source of boiler tube leakage must be precisely localized. In this study, the quaternary acoustic array was used in the furnace, a set of hyperboloidal equations was established, and the sensors distributed for capturing the leakage signal were given. The experiment on leakage localization showed that a stable and sharp peak was obtained through an approximation of the maximum likelihood estimator. In order to avoid initial guess and distant source assumption, this study employed adaptive Guassian mutation operator, which was implemented in the GA, to provide an explicit solution. Compared with the quaternary plane, the stereo array was more robust and accurate, although it required more time to converge. The time delay estimator error greatly influenced the accuracy of the localization. In addition, the quaternary plane array localization error was within the permitted range of 0.01 us, while the 0.1 us figure in the stereo array was derived through numerical calculation.

Keywords Boiler Leakage; Hyperboloidal location; Quaternary acoustic array; Genetic algorithm; Time delay error