Content-Based Active-Set Method for the Pressure-Dependent Model of Water Distribution Systems

Abstract

A new content-based, box-constrained, active-set projected Newton method is presented that solves for the heads, the pipe flows, and the nodal outflows of a water distribution system in which nodal outflows are pressure dependent. The new method is attractive because, by comparison with the previously published weighted least-squares energy and mass residuals (EMR) damped Newton method, (1) it typically takes fewer iterations, (2) it does not require damping, (3) it takes less wall-clock time, (4) it does not require the addition of any virtual elements, and (5) it is algorithmically easier to deal with. Various pressure-outflow relationships (PORs), which model nodal outflows, were considered and two new PORs are presented. The new method is shown, by application to eight previously published case study networks with up to about 20,000 pipes and 18,000 nodes, to be up to five times faster than the EMR method and to take between 34% and 70% fewer iterations than the EMR method.