The evaluation of hydraulic reliability indices in water distribution networks under pipe failure conditions

Abstract

In this research, reliability indicators of water distribution networks were evaluated under pipe failure conditions. The case studies included two benchmark networks and one real-life water distribution network in Iran with more hydraulic constraints. Some important reliability indicators were presented, such as resilience index, network resilience, modified resilience index, and minimum surplus head index. GANetXL was used to do the one-objective and two-objective optimization of the previously mentioned water distribution networks in order to not only minimize the cost but also maximize the reliability indicators. Moreover, the results of a statistical analysis for each pipe were used to determine the sensitive pipes that were of the most failure probability. GANetXL is an optimization tool in the Microsoft Excel environment and works based on a genetic algorithm. GANetXL has the capability of being linked to EPANET (hydraulic simulation software). The results obtained clearly showed that network resilience index was poor performance when compared with the other indexes under pipe failure conditions, especially in real-life networks that include small pipe diameters. It was also showed that if a water distribution network was optimized only in terms of cost, then there would be an unacceptable pressure drop at some nodes in case of pipe failure.