Development of dead-end system calculation model for water reticulation design using Microsoft Excel with optimized algorithm: a case study at regional operations center (ROC) Melaka, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper presents computation of Dead-End System for Water Reticulation using Excel Spreadsheet. An on-going project entitled Regional Operations Center (ROC) located in Melaka, Malaysia was taken as a case study for this research in which all the information needed such as water demand, tapping pressure and location were referred. In a Civil and Structural consulting firm, a great amount of time (approximately 5 hours) had been taken in performing Dead- End analysis. Furthermore, the computation of design by the engineers is a tedious process as the previous spreadsheet contains wrong and insufficient information. With that, this research is aimed to design a Dead-End System Calculation which can compute the necessary information needed in Water Reticulation. As well, the study aims to verify the accuracy of the above said calculation spreadsheet by using EPANET which is a modelling tool for drinking water distribution. This research was done first by designing the calculation spreadsheet using preliminary information from ROC. Then, the exact same design was computed by using EPANET. Next, comparison of results taken from both methods was carried out. Lastly, the comparison on time taken to compute water reticulation design between the previous available spreadsheet and the calculation spreadsheet designed through this research was done. The verified calculation spreadsheet will allow users to get hydraulic information such as velocity, optimum pipe size, residual pressure and total head loss.