Design of surge tank for water supply systems using the impulse response method with the GA algorithm

Abstract

The impact of the surge tank has been incorporated into the platform of the impulse response method. The impedance functions for pipeline systems equipped with a surge tank were also derived. Hydraulic transients could be efficiently analyzed by the developed method. The simulation of normalized pressure variation using the method of characteristics and the impulse response method shows good agreement only in the condition of an identical computational interval between pipeline elements and that of the surge tank connector. The important numerical issue, the Courant number condition, of the traditional grid-based approaches can introduce substantial difficulty for optimization of surge tank parameters. The surge tank design could be performed by incorporation of the impulse response method with the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The objective functions for the surge tank design can be made using the pressure-head response at any point along the pipeline system while considering both the security and cost of the system. Substantial flexibility in the design of surge tank parameters, such as the location in the pipeline, the length of the connector, and the diameters for the connector and the surge tank can be found during the optimization procedure.