An Electrical Capacitance Array for Imaging of Water Leakage inside Insulating Slabs with Porous Cells

• Main Authors: Rui Li, Yi Li, Lihui Peng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-06-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: electrical capacitance array; water leakage imaging; sensitivity map; image reconstruction; capacitance measurement circuit
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/11/2514

The paper proposes a capacitance-sensor-array-based imaging system to detect water leakage inside insulating slabs with porous cells, such as anechoic acoustic rubber tiles. The modeling is conducted by using the finite element method to obtain the electrical potential distribution and sensitivity map with the proposed capacitance sensor array. An experimental test setup, which is composed of an eight-electrode capacitance sensor array and a commercialized capacitance bridge instrument for measurement, is developed. Experiments regarding different leakage scenarios are carried out by using the test setup. Preliminary results standing for different water leakage cases, which are based on the experimental data obtained from the test setup, are presented and depicted as images reconstructed by using different algorithms including the linear back projection (LBP), the projected Landweber iteration, and the total variation regularization. These results demonstrate that the proposed capacitance sensor array is feasible and has a great potential for imaging of water leakage inside insulating slabs with porous cells. A cost-effective capacitance measurement circuit for practical applications is also proposed and simulated.