COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SINGLE AND MULTIPLE LEAKAGE EFFECTS FOR URBAN WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

Abstract

The water distribution networks (WDNs) are experiencing poor performance due to lack of systematic analysis and management of leakages.  The WDN is analysed to observe its behavior during normal as well as leakage conditions. Leakages are added at a single location or distributed uniformly in the entire network for analysis generally. In real situations, the leakages are observed at several locations in many networks.  In such conditions, to get a realistic value of WDN’s performance it is necessary to analyze the network with multiple leakages. The study proposes a new concept of WDN analysis with multiple leakages and analysed its impact on hydraulic behavior of the network. To demonstrate the proposed method, Kosad WDN of Surat is simulated with diverse leakage scenarios such as no leakage, single leakage and multiple leakage conditions. The result shows the comparison between single and multiple leakage effects on hydraulic parameters such as node pressure and flow rate in the pipes.  The result shows that multiple leakages at varied locations reduce the performance severely compared to single leakage scenario. The study is helpful to improve performance of the WDN by managing leakages effectively.