Water Distribution Network Pressure-Driven Analysis Using the Enhanced Global Gradient Algorithm (EGGA)

Abstract

Pressure-driven analysis of water distribution networks (WDNs) can realistically reproduce the actual behavior of the hydraulic system, especially with reference to leakages, which are not under human control, and, sometimes to demands in pressure-deficient conditions. Classical WDN models represent the demand and leakage outflows in terms of either prior fixed nodal discharges, in classical demand-driven analysis, or dependent on actual nodal pressures, in pressure-driven analysis. This work presents a WDN pressure-driven algorithm that allows accounting for actual leakage and demand patterns along pipes or, as a complementary feature, for network topological simplification. It is on the basis of the enhanced global gradient algorithm (EGGA) and has been introduced and discussed in comparison to classical pressure-driven GGA. Three test networks have been used to study the convergence issue of the newly proposed algorithm, and the largest network has been used to discuss its computational efficiency.