A
Water Distribution System (WDS) is a collected works of hydraulic control
elements jointly connected to convey adequate quantity and quality of water
from sources to consumers in reliable manner. Reliability of WDS is defined as
the probability of satisfying nodal demands and pressure heads for various
possible pipe failures in the WDS at any given time. The prediction of the
performance of a WDS under a temporarily deficient condition is necessary for
reliability analysis and design of WDS.
This
paper presents an innovative methodology and concept, namely the “Polygon
Method” to evaluate the reliability of WDS that can be used in the design phase
and for identifying repair of pipes to be carried out on existing systems. The
proposed methodology focuses on the impact of five parameters, which are used
as to measure the reliability of the network. A study using this methodology
shows the concrete possibilities of applying this approach to a wide spectrum
of cases. The method assesses the vulnerability of the WDS to the failure of
any particular pipe element, and provides a quantitative estimate of the impact
and produces results in visual form as a shape of polygon.
The
reliability is compared with the total cost to enable the combination of network
investment and operational costs to be assessed. A snapshot of reliability can
be achieved based on the energy losses in pipes. The network that has lower
energy losses are found more reliable than those with higher energy losses
while operated under failure conditions. The study also revealed that higher
investment cost of network does help to increase the system reliability but not
necessarily always guarantee the higher system reliability.
For details, please visit following website:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7aKMUYELp-EMzZjYWQ1NTctYzNhMS00OTFlLTkxMjEtOGE0MGE4NTYwNDVj/edit
