In this paper, we field demonstrate a water pipeline flow detection based on a simple, low-cost, and highly sensitive fiber optic acoustic sensor. The fiber acoustic sensor consists of a multimode interference effect in a single-mode-multimode-single-mode (SMS) fiber structure. In the field test, we mounted an SMS fiber sensor on a 6” diameter water pipeline, where water flow is precisely controlled by a variable frequency driver (ABB-ACQ580 sensor-less drive). The experimental results indicate that the proposed SMS fiber acoustic sensor can be effectively applied for practical applications of pipeline flow monitoring and identify leak detection with high sensitivity and accuracy.
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