Research on continuous leakage location of stiffened structure based on frequency energy ratio mapping method

The stiffened structure has a complex effect on signal propagation and poses difficulties in leakage location technology. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a frequency energy ratio mapping method (FERMM). The method divides the grid on the structure in advance, compares the signal of the distributed sensor with the reference signal to generate a mapping matrix frome the energy ratio vector. When a leak at an unknown location occurs, the energy ratio vector is formed by the same method and matched with the mapping matrix to locate the unknown leakage. The energy ratio vector of this method are only related to the propagation path and are independent of the spectral characteristics of the leakage and the frequency response characteristics of the receiving sensor. FERMM has the adaptability to complex structures and can locate continuous signals for a fast real-time process. The FERMM was verified by 120 sets of experiments. The results show that the average positioning error of FERMM is 25.5 mm, which can reach 14.4 mm error under the optimal setting of grid coincidence.