Computer aided automatic water pipe network analysis by simultaneous loop equation solution method

Abstract

In the proposed work, a new algorithm has been developed for automatic water pipe network analysis by simultaneous loop equation solution method. In the current work, water pipe network is constructed from the pipe and node data structures which is a graph having nodes as vertices and pipes as edges. Loops in network are extracted automatically by Nested Breadth First Search (NBFS) algorithm. Extracted loops are arranged in clockwise direction. The analysis of water distribution network has been performed by the simultaneous loop equation solution method. The analysis is based on the Darcy-Weisbach head loss equation in loops. Algorithm of automatic initialization of pipe discharge has been developed. Friction factor is calculated iteratively for better accuracy of result. The pressure drop in the pipe of the network is obtained by generalized Darcy-Weisbach equation. Finally, the balanced discharges in the pipes are compared with the Hardy Cross method. The result shows that the proposed method is more efficient than Hardy-Cross method for the complex network.