Leakage Calibration of Water Distribution Systems

Water leakages in a water distribution system may vary from 5% to 55% of total supply. Hence, leakage has an important impact on the system operation, where water losses through leakage generally increase with pressure. Several studies modeled the interrelationships between leakage and pressure, where the most common connection is described as qk-leak = β_k1_kP_k^αk where P is the pressure in pipe k; 1 is the pipe length; and α, β are the leakage model coefficients. A method is proposed in this study for calibrating the leakage parameters α, β. Previous studies suggested that these parameters could be connected with the pipe age and its material rigidity. For searching the model parameters, the pipes in the network are partitioned according to their properties, and for every group of pipes, the α, β values are searched. Hydraulic parameters as well as the leakage are computed, and the results are compared with experimental data of the network. Through using a genetic algorithm (GA) and EPANET the values of α, β are modified until appropriate calibration matching is attained.