The assessment of water loss from a damaged distribution pipe using the FEFLOW software

Abstract

Common reasons of real water loss in distribution systems are leakages caused by the failures or pipe breakages. Depending on the intensity of leakage from a damaged buried pipe, water can flow to the soil surface just after the failure occurs, much later or never at all. The localization of the place where the pipe breakage occurs is relatively easy when water outflow occurs on the soil surface. The volume of lost water strongly depends on the time it takes to localize the place of a pipe breakage. The aim of this paper was to predict the volume of water lost between the moment of a failure occurring and the moment of water outflow on the soil surface, during a prospective failure in a distribution system. The basis of the analysis was a numerical simulation of a water pipe failure using the FEFLOW v. 5.3 software (Finite Element subsurface FLOW systems) for a real middle-sized distribution system. Simulations were conducted for variants depending on pipes’ diameter (80÷200 mm) for minimal and maximal hydraulic pressure head in the system (20.14 and 60.41 m H2O, respectively). FEFLOW software application enabled to select places in the water system where possible failures would be difficult to detect.