Effect of Breakage Level One in Design of Water Distribution Networks

Design of water distribution networks (WDNs) that do not consider performance criteria would possibly lead to less cost but it could also decrease water pressure reliability in abnormal conditions such as a breakage of pipes of the network. Thus, awareness of the situation of consumption nodes, by considering water pressures and the amount of water that is being supplied, could be an effective source of information for designing high performance WDNs. In this paper, Two-loop and Hanoi networks are selected for least-cost design, considering water pressures and the amount of water supplied on each consumption node under breakage level one, using the honey-bee mating optimization (HBMO) algorithm. In each state of design, a specific pressure is defined as the minimum expected pressure under breakage level one which holds the pressure reliability in the considered range. Also, variations of some criteria such as reliabilities of pressure and demand, vulnerability of the network, and flexibility of the design are analyzed as a tool for choosing the appropriate state of design. Results show that a minor increase in the cost of design could lead to a considerable improvement in reliabilities of pressure and demand under breakage level one. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011