A Novel SWMM Based Algorithm Application to Storm Sewer Network Design

Abstract

An automated algorithm based on the dynamic hydrological and hydraulic simulation modules in Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was developed to aid the design of storm sewer networks, provided that a layout is given. Numerical performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with the existing design methods with two application cases. The automated computation process of the sewer network design was divided into two stages and solved iteratively, determining pipe diameter and pipe slope, respectively. In the first stage, starting with a set of initial values including pipe diameter, pipe cover depth, and ground elevation at manholes, the iteration was carried out from the downstream to the upstream while the pipe slopes of the network were assumed to be fixed and the diameter of each pipe segment was calculated. In the second stage, pipe diameters calculated from the first stage were fixed and the pipe slopes were calculated successively from the downstream pipe segment to the upstream pipe segment. Every time the diameter or slope of a pipe segment was adjusted, the pipe flow rate, velocity, and flow depth were obtained by running SWMM hydrological and hydraulic simulation modules. The iteration terminated once the combination scheme of pipe diameters and slopes met the design ordinance which requires the pipe flows full under gravity in a design return period. A real urban sewer system in a hilly city and a benchmark sewer network from the literature were tested to validate the proposed automated algorithm, and good performance was shown. The automated design results explicitly show that the proposed storm sewer design approach leads to a quality solution with reduced computational effort.

Assessing Redundancy in Stormwater Structures Under Hydraulic Design

“…The storm sewer design applied in this study is described by Shao at al. [26]. It is based on dynamic hydrological and hydraulic flow routing in EPA Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) [30] for estimating maximum volumetric flow rates through all systems.…”

“…The objective of this paper is then as follows: (1) generate various stormwater structures/layouts by consecutively and systematically analyzing the complex nature of the drainage network, and reduce the number of loops from a given grid-like network using topological network properties; (2) design all generated stormwater collection structures with the help of the one-dimensional Saint-Venant shallow flow equation as well as the Manning equation with a two-stage sewer design described by Shao et al [26], which is more efficient and computationally faster than optimization techniques; (3) evaluate the performance of all designed structures, which have a different number of loops, in terms of cost and flooding behavior by considering the urbanization impact in order to finally tackle the questions mentioned above.…”

Impact of Self-Cleansing Criteria Choice on the Optimal Design of Sewer Networks in South America

“…The five proposed simulations are presented in the Supplementary Material, Tables S4-S8. The proposed methodology is applied to the defined scenarios. This methodology takes into account the self-cleansing criteria (3), (4), (6), (9), (11), and (12) shown in Table 1, which are used for wastewater sewer systems, and it covers the range of self-cleansing criteria for variations of these systems. The results of the methodology for each simulation are presented in Figure 3.…”

“…Recently, several authors have used multi-objective strategies, which consider an optimal design of sewer pipes while a cost function equation is being minimized. Techniques such as dynamic programming [1,2], nonlinear programming [3], random search [4], LP-based heuristic approach [5], genetic algorithms [6][7][8][9][10], automated algorithm combining hydraulic and hydrological simulation [11], and DP-based optimization engine [12], amongst other approaches, have been used for the optimal design of sewer systems. Each of these approaches has been used in several benchmark sewer networks, e.g., Mays and Wenzel [13] stormwater sewer network, taking into account different cost function equations and design constraints.…”

Approach for Evaluating LID Measure Layout Scenarios Based on Random Forest: Case of Guangzhou—China

“…First developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1971, it is a watershed-scale distributed hydrologic model based on water diffusion. Given the availability of the source code and library functions, it is thought to be the most widely used urban stormwater model throughout the world [16]. Considering the spatial variability and principles of the SWMM, the model of a research area is often simplified into several subcatchments, each of which is generalized as a nonlinear reservoir when completing surface runoff calculations.…”