Estimation of Small Amplitude Pressure Wave in Gaseous Pipeline Using a Linear Kalman Filter

Abstract

Measurement of pressure distribution in gaseous pipeline is important from a view point of control or safe management. In the present paper, a linear Kalman filter is developed to estimate the pressure estimation of small amplitude pressure wave in a single straight gaseous pipeline with constant circular cross section. The Kalman filter uses the linear dynamic system of the pipeline derived by using the approximation method of the unsteady friction, high speed and accurate computing method. The inputs to the Kalman filter are inlet and outlet pressures, and the pressure at the point one third of the pipe entrance is used as the observation point for feedback compensation. The performance of the developed method is tested using two experimental results by comparing with calculation results without feedback compensation. The comparison demonstrated that the developed method has better performance in the presences of measurement noise and erroneous boundary condition than does the ordinary calculation. It also showed much higher ability in error reduction than the ordinary calculation in computation with an erroneous initial condition.