Hydraulic Infrastructures Design Using Simulated Annealing

Abstract

Because the provision of an adequate and reliable water supply system involves a very high level of investment, it is essential that the layout and design of such systems are very carefully planned and the operation of their hydraulic infrastructures is properly managed. This paper describes a simulated annealing method that can be used to find the least-cost design for a gravitational looped water distribution network. Simulated annealing heuristics have proved to be extremely efficient in solving classic combinatorial problems such as the “traveling salesmen” problem. To assess its performance, this heuristic method has been applied to well-known networks in the literature. The results compare very favorably with those obtained by other optimization methods, confirming that simulated annealing is capable of handling nonlinear mixed-integer problems such as this. This encourages further research in this area.