Reliability based optimal design of a municipal water supply pipe network

Abstract

This paper intends to provide a detailed methodology on the development of the optimization model including reliability for design of water distribution networks using genetic algorithms (GA) and EPANET in the MATLAB environment. The coding developed is easy to use and also flexible. A new parameter is proposed to determine the overall network reliability using network nodal demands and their corresponding satisfaction indices and is incorporated in the optimization model. The proposed methodology is tested on a standard Hanoi network. After several runs and out of many optimal solutions obtained, the solution with a total cost of 7.78 million associated with a reliability of 0.7323 is considered as the best and the corresponding results are presented and compared with previous research.

Keywords::

• MATLAB
• EPANET
• genetic algorithms
• satisfaction indices
• Hanoi network

Acknowledgements

The author is highly indebted to P.R. Bhave, a pioneer in the field of analysis and design of water distribution networks, who actually gave the basic idea of the present research work. The author also wishes to thank Dr N.V. Umamahesh, Professor at NIT, Warangal for giving the idea of optimal design procedures and an exposure to the use of fuzzy logic.