Abstract: In order to reduce real-time estimation error of gas leakage position in pressure vessel, thereby accurately monitoring its working conditions and preventing accidents, firstly, a leakage source estimation method based on WOA was proposed from perspective of acoustic monitoring, and DOA was used to predict leakage location direction to obtain angle coordinates of leak source. Then, WOA adaptive selection method was introduced to decompose characteristic value of DOA, and the most accurate leak location was acquired through multiple iteration. Finally, with pressure vessel in a chemical plant as an example, estimation results of leakage source based on WOA were compared. The results show that this method can precisely define location of leakage in pressure vessel, and it is found to have better robustness and anti-noise performance than traditional DOA and DOA methods based on other bionic intelligent algorithms according to performance simulation curves. Moreover, it has a positioning accuracy rate as high as of 95%, ans can save time consumption by 92.2%, thus enhancing real-time nature of engineering applications.

Key words: whale optimization algorithm (WOA), gas leak source estimation, direction of arrival(DOA) estimation, pressure vessel, bionic algorithm