A Possibility to Identify Piping Erosion in Earth Hydraulic Works Using Thermal Monitoring

Abstract

We present the study of the backward piping identification by means of temperature analysis. Thermal monitoring of the earth hydraulic structures is nowadays a very effective and promising method for leakages and erosion process detection. However, piping thermal influence on dams thermal field wasn't investigated deeply. In the paper the results of the extensive numerical computations for the coupled heat and water transport in porous domain with the downstream side pipe opening are described. Computation covered the range of hydraulic diffusivity from 10-7 to 10-4 m2s-1 and made use of the finite volume method with the Fluent numerical modelization platform. The basis principles of the pipe thermal influences are presented with the evaluation of the possibilities of identifying piping parameters with temperature measurements.