Evaluation of Transient Scenarios on a Water Distribution Lab Model Calibrated Under Steady State Conditions

摘要

A water distribution system was constructed at the Universidad de los Andes Hydraulics Lab for the purpose of investigating the performance of water distribution numerical models for hydraulic conditions under steady state flows, transient flows and for water quality estimation. This paper first presents a description of the calibration procedure used to adjust an EPANET steady state model to measurements and its subsequent validation with other steady state conditions. The result achieved show the high adjustment of the mathematical model to the measurements for steady state conditions. Further on, the paper presents experimental results for various transient scenarios induced by opening or closing different ball valves almost instantly, measured by nine pressure transducers and two noninvasive flow transducers placed at entrance of the network and at different pipes of the same network according to the transient scenario. For each study case, the pressures are compared with expected values found with mathematical formulation of transient flow in pipes. It can be noticed that the differences between modeled and measured pressures, and other hydraulic responses, are acceptable for some cases but considerably big for some others. An analysis of the nature of those differences is also presented in the paper, including a sensitivity analysis for the mathematical model.