Impact of Pressure-Driven Demand on Background Leakage Estimation in Water Supply Networks

Kazeem B Adedeji,Adnan M Abu-Mahfouz,Yskandar Hamam

doi:10.3390/w11081600

Abstract

Increasing water demand due to urbanization creates a need to develop schemes for managing water supply networks (WSNs). In recent years, hydraulic modeling of WSNs has been used to assess the state of networks in terms of leakage analysis and pressure control. These models are based on demand-driven modeling (DDM) analysis and pressure-driven modeling (PDM) analysis. The former assumes that the nodal demand is fulfilled consistently regardless of the nodal pressure head. The latter appraises the demand as a function of the available pressure head at the nodes. In a previous paper by Adedeji et al. (2017), an algorithm was presented for background leakage detection and estimation in WSNs. The results demonstrated that the algorithm allows the detection of critical pipes and the indication of the nodes where such critical pipes are located for possible pressure control. However, such an algorithm assumes a demand-driven condition of WSNs. In this paper, a pressure-driven modeling is integrated into the developed algorithm with emphasis on its impact on the background leakage estimate. The results obtained are compared to the demand-driven analysis using two WSNs as case studies. The results presented, which consider pipe and node levels, demonstrate that the reliance of the nodal demand on the available pressure head at the node influences the magnitude of the background leakage flow. It is conceived that this investigation might be crucial for the background leakage estimation while considering WSNs operating under pressure-deficient conditions. In this paper, the solution time for both simulation scenarios is also presented.

Highlights

Supplying good quality drinking water to meet the ever-increasing consumer demand has become a major task for water utilities
This study appraises the effect of a pressure-dependent demand on the background leakage estimation utilizing two water supply networks (WSNs) as numerical cases
The results presented demonstrate that the reliance of the nodal demand on the available pressure head at the node impacts the magnitude of the background leakage flow at the pipe and node level

Summary

Introduction

Supplying good quality drinking water to meet the ever-increasing consumer demand has become a major task for water utilities. This impels the need to perform water network asset management to evaluate the state of underground or above-ground water pipelines for system planning, schedule maintenance, loss reduction, and demand prediction purposes. Water utilities have received distinctive proposals to confine leakage in water supply frameworks. These are based on devices such as leak noise correlators, acoustic noise loggers, ground-penetrating radars, step testing, combined acoustic loggers and correlators, electronic step testers, digital correlators, and advanced ground microphones [1,2].

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