Pressure and Leakage Management of Water Distribution Network with Optimal Scheduling of Valves and Pumps

Control of water leakage in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) is important to save drinking water consumption. Pressure management is one of the solutions that directly affected the water leakage and reliability of the WDNs. The leakage rate depended on the nodal pressure, high-pressure increases the leakage rate and failure in the network, and low pressure decreases water supply reliability in WDNs. However, it is necessary to be preserved sufficient pressure throughout the network to ensure that consumer demands are fully provided at all times. Pressure management is one of the effective and cheapest methods for leakage reduction and reliability addition in WDNs. The aim of this paper is to develop a methodology based on maximizing the network reliability by applying an optimized scheduling program for setting flow control valves (FCVs) and pumps at different times of the day, leading to pressure management and leakage reduction in the networks. For this purpose, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to find the optimal setting of FCVs and pumps. The aim of the optimization algorithm is to maximize the network reliability of the WDN. For this purpose, the network pressure reliability index (NPRI) is used which is proposed by Dini and Tabesh (2017). Also, to determine the optimal location of the valves, the valve selection index (SI) is used which is proposed by Ali (2015). The methodology is verified by an example network (Jowitt and Xu, 1990). Also, it is applied to an example network and Ahar WDN.