A New Method for Quasi-Optimal Design of Water Distribution Networks

In recent years optimal design of water distribution networks (WDNs) has been a subject of interest to several researchers. In this regard, in the previous researches various optimization techniques such as linear and non-linear programming and also meta-heuristic algorithms have been used for optimal design of WDNs. Among these techniques, meta-heuristic algorithms have shown the best performance. One of the disadvantages of implementing these methods for optimizing of WDNs is their high computational costs which make their usage sometimes impossible for large real life WDNs. In this paper a new method for quasi-optimal design of WDNs is presented. In the proposed method that is based on some hydraulic rules, diameters are selected so that the energy loss per unit length of pipes will be in a specific range. Using this method and without any requirement to available optimization techniques, design of WDNs can be done in a lower time relative to the mentioned techniques, so that the cost of the designed network will be very close to the least cost. Two sample networks have been designed using the proposed new method. Comparison of the obtained results with the available optimization techniques indicates the ability of this method to find the near optimal solutions in the shortest time.