Enhancements for Modeling Target Hydraulic Head by Automatic Calculation of Variable Pump Speed

Abstract

To analyze a system of maintaining a fixed hydraulic head at a location for delivering adequate water supply with little or no storage, a conventional hydraulic model could be applied with constant speed pumps. However, modelers would need to iteratively adjust pump speed for each variable speed pump (VSP) to identify the appropriate speed factors at each time step. No doubt, this is a time consuming task, specially, when there are multiple VSPs installed in a system. This paper presents a technically enhanced approach that extends the hydraulic network model to automatically calculate the pump speed that is to deliver a prescribed hydraulic head. The improvement allows engineer to model not only a single VSP without rule-based control, but also multiple VSPs with simple and logic controls. The desired control head can be specified at any location in a system. This feature offers great flexibilities and modeling capabilities for engineers to efficiently analyze a variety of scenarios for the systems where VSPs are installed.