Detection of leaks in buried plastic water distribution pipes in urban places - a case study

The nondestructive evaluation of leaks on buried tanks, drums and pipes is of interest from a variety of engineering and environmental applications. There is a limited arsenal of tools available for leakage detections. However, the diversity of techniques shows that each has advantages and shortcomings. Geophysical techniques are faster and cheaper generally than excavation and have the advantage that they are safer in hazardous environments. Testing and studying several pipe detection tools such as pulsed induction methods, magnetic locators, EM locators, resistivity methods, acoustic techniques and GPR method, we concluded that, ground penetration radar is the most effective and accurate method to pinpoint buried pipeline leaks without digging. An extensive work using ground-penetrating radar was carried out at the central road of town Kilkis (N. Greece), in order to locate areas of possible water leakages from distribution pipes.