Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 933 937

1877-7058 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.08.172
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Procedia
Engineering
Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
Advanced in Control Engineering and Information Science

Monitoring Technique and System of Hydraulic Vibration of
Sluice Gate in Long Distance Water Conservancy Project
Pu HAN
a
, Huifang XUE
a, b
, Qing HE
c
a*
a
School of Control and Computer Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China
b
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing 210009, China
c
School of Energy Power and Mechanical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Abstract
Hydraulic vibration due to turbulent flow at large-scale sluice gates used widely is of a serious threat to water security
of long distance water conservancy projects. It is one of important technical measures to monitor and analyze on-line
vibration of hydraulic gate for the safety of hydraulic engineering. A hydraulic vibration monitoring system of gate
structure is proposed in which the accelerometers specially designed for long-term operating in deep poor water and
complex flow are used. It is proved by test and application that the accelerometer has good waterproof, pressure
resistance, anti-erosion resistance, high temperature changes and so on. The system meets the requirements of harsh
deep water environment and is of long-term safe and reliable.

2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [CEIS 2011]

Keywords: water conservancy project; sluice gate; hydraulic vibration; monitoring system; accelerometer
1. Introduction
More and more large-scale sluice gates employed in various water constructions must meet the
requirement of opening degree in operating conditions to adapt to complex change of difference between
water levels upstream and downstream, as well as jump downstream in a wider submerged range [1].
According many accident analyses for sluice gates, the gate damage often is accompanied by a strong

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-10-61772803; fax: +86-10-61772803.
E-mail address: hqng@163.com.
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2 Pu HANet al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000000
vibration caused by turbulent flow.
The fluid-induced structural vibration of sluice gate is a complex liquid-solid coupling problem that
involves the water flow conditions, the gate structure, and the interaction between them. A pulsating
pressure occurs due to water flow subjected to the boundary conditions around of the gate when gate
opens to discharge. If the water pressure fluctuation frequency is close to the natural frequency of gate,
gate resonance will be excited, which easily lead to the gate the fatigue and making destruction of the gate
structure. It is a fact that the safety of water conservancy facilities is extremely unfavorable [2-3].
The flow-induced vibration, dynamic stability and security, reliability of hydraulic gate structure under
the action of flow water are focused highly by water conservancy sector. Therefore, on-line monitoring
and analyzing gate vibration is very important for the safe operation of gate structure and is one of the key
technical issues to ensure the safe operation of hydraulic engineering [4-6].
2. Brief of long distance water diversion project
The section of a long water diversion project in Northern Xinjiang province, China consists of two
aqueduct pipelines about 11km [7]. The maximum of hydrostatic pressure head of the pipeline is up to
160m. The maximum working hydrostatic pressure is 1.6MPa. The water flow varies from 5 to 35m
3
/s. In
order to deliver small flow, a control plane gate in the outlet is employed to meet the requirements of
submergence of imported water. The gate size is 33m
2
, weight 7.7t, orifice size 2.52.5m
2
, and design
pressure head 65m, 35m of which is retaining head, 30m for the water hammer pressure [7-8]. The
opening range is 0.137-1.275m. The smaller the opening is, the larger the average velocity of orifice flow
is, and the maximum is 14.71m/s. The strong vibration of the control gate in the outlet occurs always
when the opening is small since the project put into operation. It is found in the winter maintenance
period the fact that the two support wheels at the lower part of the gate had been damaged, which is a
great risk to the safe operation of construction [8].
In general, the flow control of water pipeline is adjusted by the gate opening. According to the layout
of water pipeline and the operating requirements of gate, in order to avoid generating excessive hammer
water pressure to pipeline, the designed water level downstream must be high so that the gate is always
working under water, which greatly increases the possibility of fluid-induced vibration of the gate [1]. In
order to timely adjust the gate opening and ensure the discharged flow rate, the opening of the gate need
to be small for long period. The hydraulic characteristic of the gate as well as the induced vibration is an
extremely complex fluid-structure interaction problem.
In order to ensure the safe operation of the gate structure, a vibration monitoring system for
underwater gate structure and its house was presented and discussed.
3. General principle of vibration measurement
The relationship between acceleration, velocity and displacement of vibration is clear, therefore, in
theory, measuring any one of acceleration, velocity or displacement signal for monitoring can also get the
other two vibration signals by the corresponding computation.
Given the vibration acceleration a(t), velocity v(t), displacement x(t), we have the relationships as the
following

( ) ( ) , ( ) ( ) ( ) v t a t dt x t v t dt a t dt = = =

(1)
2
2
d ( ) d ( ) d ( )
( ) , ( )
d d d
x t v t
v t a t
t t t
= = =
x t
(2)
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Assuming the measured vibration acceleration be harmonic signal , the velocity and the
displacement are
( ) sin a t A t =

( ) sin( ) sin( )
2 2
A
v t V t t

= =

(3)
2
( ) sin( ) sin( ) sin( )
V A
x t X t t t

= = = (4)

Conversely, when the measured vibration displacement is a harmonic signal ( ) sin x t X = t , the velocity
and the displacement signals are

( ) sin( ) sin( )
2 2
v t V t X t = + = +

+
(5)
2
( ) sin( ) sin( ) sin( ) a t A t V t A t = + = + = (6)

And the amplitude relationships of the three is as following

2
A V = = X (7)

Thus, any one of vibration signals can be employed to measure for the single frequency of vibration,
and then the other two signals can be got by Eq.(4) and Eq.(5) or Eq.(7) and Eq.(8). If you just get the
vibration amplitudes, conversion by Eq.(9) only is carried on. However, when the vibration signal
contains multiple frequencies, integral in accordance with Eq.(1) or differential in accordance with the
Eq.(2) must be carried on to get other the vibration amplitudes and the signals.
4. Monitoring system
Considering the vibration frequency of the gate structure and the installation of transducers,
accelerometers are employed to accurately capture the vibrations of gates and its pier in all directions at
the full variety of operating conditions. The acceleration signals of vibrations measured by accelerometers
are integrated to obtain the vibration velocity signals, and then integrated again to obtain the vibration
displacement signals. The monitoring system shown in Fig.1 for gate vibrations adopts redundancy
sensors in the configuration to ensure safe and reliable, that is, two triaxial accelerometers in each of gates
are mounted on the gate downstream to reduce water erosion.
5. Vibration transducer
Vibration accelerometer is of wide frequency response, small size, easy to use and thus widely
employed in condition monitoring. Accelerometer can be divided into single-axial, biaxial and triaxial.
Because the accelerometers used in the system must always operate underwater as well as the installation
and maintenance is very difficult, the three-axial acceleration transducer being of pressure-resistant water-
proof and working at wide temperature range and is specially designed.
5.1. Triaxial accelerometer
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Triaxial accelerometers 1
Triaxial accelerometers 2
Triaxial accelerometers 3
Triaxial accelerometers 4
Triaxial accelerometers 6
Triaxial accelerometers 5
Triaxial accelerometers 7
Gate 1
Gate 2
Left pier of
gate 1
Top plane of
gate
Left pier of
gate 2
Multichannel Data
Acquisition System
Computer and signal
analysis system

Fig.2. Block diagram of vibration monitoring and analysis system for hydraulic gate
As we known, traditional accelerometer is made of piezoelectric material with high impedance and
needs a charge amplifier as subsequent processing circuit or instrument, which makes measurement
system complex, expensive, low reliable, and inconvenience. The accelerometer based on MEMS with
high precision and low cost is developed and speedily applied.
The accelerometer ADXL330 based on MEMS includes the triaxial MEMS sensor structure and the
signal conditioning circuit in 16-pin plastic surface-mount package only 441.45mm
3
. The outputs are
analog voltage signals. ADXL330 can be used to measure the static acceleration of gravity, the movement
acceleration, and shock up to 10000g.
The bandwidth of the ADXL330 is 0.5Hz-1.6kHz. The output for each axis has a built-in resistance
R
F
=32k, so the output signal bandwidth can be determined by the external capacitor C
x
. The bandwidth
of anti-aliasing and noise reduction filter at -3dB can be calculated as following

F
-3dB
= 1/(2R
F
C
x
) 5F/C
x
(10)
5.2. Pressure-resistant water-proof transducer for deep water
As the pipeline of long distance water diversion project works in annual period, the underwater
transducers have to meet common requirements in accuracy and stability, in addition to meet some
special requirements, such as sensors and connecting cables must meet water-proof up to pressure depth
of 30m, anticorrosion and anti-impact in structural design and installation, the dry season the minimum
storage temperature low down -40

C.
According to the above-mentioned characteristics and requirements of underwater structure vibration
as well as the wide range of environment temperature, the vibration transducer based on the ADXL330
for underwater measurement is designed to minimize the installation work and connecting cable.
5.3. Calibration of transducer and environmental test
The transducer calibration can carries on a standard vibrator or by gravity. The calibration by gravity is
937 Pu HAN et al. / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 933 937
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adopted because it need no calibration reference and is not subject to installation. The method is rotating
accelerometer 180 or more along the sensitivity axis and then recording the minimum V
min
and the
maximum V
max
of output voltage of transducer. Then the sensitivity is obtained by
S
a
= (V
max
-V
min
)/2 (11)
For multi-axis transducer, the above calibrating procedure need be carried on respectively for any axis.
The environmental tests of transducer include operation environment and shortage environment, such
as waterproof test, operation test at low temperature and operation test after stored at low temperature,
etc.
The method of waterproof test is placing transducer in the water pressure 2MPa for 24hours, and then
inspecting the seal well or not, finally, checking the operating function.
For low temperature operating test, observe the operating situation of the transducer is whether normal
while the transducer is put into the cold box, dropped the temperature to -20

C and held for one hour

while. For low temperature storage test, check the operating situation of the transducer is whether normal
after the transducer was put into the cold box, dropped the temperature to -40

C, held for one hour, and

then put half an hour at room temperature.
6. Conclusions
Large hydraulic gate in long distance water diversion project plays an important role in the regulation
and control. The turbulent flow-induced vibration of hydraulic gate is a serious problem. The vibration
monitoring of underwater gate structure needs special vibration transducer and monitoring system suit to
water environment, that is to meet the waterproof, anti-pressure, anti-erosion resistance, large temperature
change, poor water quality, pulse flow, and so on. The trialaxis waterproof vibration transducer was
developed and applied to online vibration monitoring systems of large-scale sluice structure of the section
of a long water diversion project. It is proved by test and application that the transducer has good
waterproof, pressure resistance, anti-erosion resistance, high temperature changes and so on.
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