Hydraulic analysis of water distribution networks is an important problem in civil engineering. A widely used approach in steady-state analysis of water distribution networks is the global gradient algorithm (GGA). However, when the GGA is applied to solve these networks, zero flows cause a computation failure. On the other hand, there are different mathematical formulations for hydraulic analysis under pressure-driven demand and leakage simulation. This paper introduces an optimization model for the hydraulic analysis of water distribution networks using a metaheuristic method called shuffled complex evolution (SCE) algorithm. In this method, applying if-then rules in the optimization model is a simple way in handling pressure-driven demand and leakage simulation, and there is no need for an initial solution vector which must be chosen carefully in many other procedures if numerical convergence is to be achieved. The overall results indicate that the proposed method has the capability of handling various pipe networks problems without changing in model or mathematical formulation. Application of SCE in optimization model can lead to accurate solutions in pipes with zero flows. Finally, it can be concluded that the proposed method is a suitable alternative optimizer challenging other methods especially in terms of accuracy.
There are different methods for the hydraulic analysis of water supply networks. In the solution process of most of these methods, a large system of linear equationsis solved in each iteration. This usually requires a high computational effort. Hardy Cross method is one of the approaches that do not need such aprocess and may converge to the solution through scalar divisions. However,this method has two short comings: first, initial discharges should satisfy continuity equation at each node; second a large number of iterations are required to converge to solution. In this article an algorithm is suggested for the selection of initial discharges that are close to the final results while the continuity equations are automatically established. This algorithm may be directly implemented in the Hardy Cross method. To reduce the number of iterations the Hardy Cross method is combined with third-order and sixteenth-order methods. The results of some numerical examples demonstrate that the use of the combined approach with the suggested initial guess reduces the number of iterations and hydraulic analysis time and the solutions converge with a high accuracy. doi: 10.5829/idosi.ije.2014.27.09c.0
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.