Modelling and simulation of drinking-water networks

Abstract

Water distribution network models are used by water companies in a wide range of applications. The availability of a good model allows the users to test any methodology that, otherwise, could not be applied directly to the real network. A model can be used to predict future states of the network, to analyse the effect of manipulating the real network before doing it, or to simulate faulty states to locate leakages, among others. This presents the basis of water distribution network modelling. The hydraulic equations are presented in their matrix form, which will be used in the following. Demands can be calculated, using the matrix model, if all heads or flows are known. However, this information is not available in a real case. Consequently, a hydraulic solver is needed to simulate the network, computing heads and flows from a predefined set of demands and boundary conditions. Results are obtained using the extended period simulations of the steady-state models. Transients are not considered due to their low importance in large networks.