Technique for the Pressure-Driven Analysis of Water Distribution Networks with Flow- and Pressure-Regulating Valves

This technical note presents a technique for the pressure-driven analysis (PDA) of water distribution networks with flow- and pressure-regulating valves. The technique is a combination of a PDA method based on adding artificial components (a pipe with a check valve, a flow control valve, and an emitter) to each demand node and a hybrid simulator that models valves as pipes of variable resistance in cases where the EPANET 2.0 valve treatment heuristics fails. The examples considered demonstrate that the proposed PDA technique may be an alternative to EPANET 2.2, the latest version of EPANET 2.0 with a PDA option, in cases where the latter is not applicable or fails to compute the correct solution.

Automated summary

This technical note presents a technique for pressure-driven analysis of water distribution networks with flow- and pressure-regulating valves. The technique may serve as an alternative to EPANET 2.2 in cases where the EPANET 2.0 valve treatment heuristics fails.