how do they find out where an underground electrical cable that are encased in concrete pipes has developed a fault or gotten cut and needs fixing?
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I’ll give you a small scale example.
I’m an electrician for a small company.
We have a break locator tool which is meant for direct burial conductors in soil.
There is a signal generator which one clamp clips onto a conductor at either end of a termination point and the other lead is clamped onto a long screw driver that I push into the soil.
The signal is a high voltage dc pulse. It will send high voltage DC (2400V) down the conductor and if it is broken, and the soil moisture content is high enough the signal will return through the earth back through the screw driver and negative lead.
The second part of the tool is an inverted I shaped tool with two probes which I push into the earth. There’s a small signal detector with a needle that tells me if the break is to the left or right of where I pushed the probe tool into the ground.
Once the tool stops indicating left or right, and the needle on the gauge stays in the center then that is likely where the break is located.
I know that there is much fancier equipment out there than what I use, but that’s my experience.
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