Evaluation of the reliability improvement of a water distribution system by changing pipe

Abstract

When replacing deteriorated pipes, it is important to select pipe diameters of new pipes for improving the long-term reliability of a water distribution system. However, as the use of larger diameter pipes brings cost increase, it is required to evaluate the improvement of the reliability by the use of larger diameter pipes. In this study, we propose a methodology to evaluate the improvement of the reliability by the use of different pipe diameters. For this purpose, we rely on the segment-based minimum cutset method with the success mode approach to evaluate the reliability of a water distribution system and determine which pipes and their diameters will be replaced to improve the reliability using GA, After the suggested method is applied to a real water distribution system, the optimized pipe diameters produces higher reliability of the system than the current ones with the same construction cost. However, compared to the increase rate of the construction cost, the improvement of the reliability is not significant. Thus, in addition to the use the different pipe diameters, the structural modification or adding new valves to the system is necessary to improve the reliability efficiently.

Keywords

Water Distribution System, Reliability Assessment, GA, Pipe Diameter