Leakage Calibration of Water Distribution Networks

Water leakages in a water distribution system may vary from 5% to 55% of total supply and generally increase with pressure. The connection modeled by several studies as: qk_leak= βklkPkαk where P is the pressure in pipe k, l is the pipe length, and α, β are the leakage model coefficients. A method is proposed in this study for calibrating α, β. The pipes in the network are partitioned according to their properties, and for every group of pipes, the α, β values are searched. Through using a genetic algorithm and EPANET the values of α, β are modified until appropriate calibration matching is attained.