A continuous leakage real-time localization method based on space phase image of elastic wave field with improved CNN.

• It is proved that the elastic wave field excited by the leakage source in the wall is related to the leakage position. • Not limited to a particular moment (like AE), this method can locate the leak source at any time after the leak occurs. • This method simplifies the original multi-sensor array into one and reduces the complexity of real-time leak location system. To satisfy the requirement of real-time monitoring and locating of the leakage in large pressure vessels, a method of leakage source location based on improved convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed in this paper. In this method, the polar coordinate model of elastic wave propagation excited by continues leakage is established, and the improved CNN is constructed according to its spatial field distribution, and the training set of the network is obtained by finite element simulation. The experimental results show that this method can be applied to locate the leak at any time after it occurs, and only a single sensor array is used. In the experiment of 1 m2 stiffened test plate, the absolute distance error was less than 0.1 m and the absolute angle error was less than 0.1 rad in 90.2 % of all samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]