Corrosion, poor pipe joints or insufficient thrust restraint all cause minor leakage in water pipelines. Minor leakage is difficult to eliminate because it is small and distributed. On the other hand, aged or weakened pipes may be broken accidentally because of excessive pressure, external loads, water hammer, frost or construction excavation. This emergency leakage requires rapid attention because large volumes of water may be lost. Potential for damage to other structures due to flooding or soil (slope) failures, or risk to trafKc from flooding or icing of road surfaces is also increased. In addition, in areas of significant traffic congestion, e.g. many Asian cities, it may take one or more hours to dispatch a repair crew to the site....[ Read more ]

Corrosion, poor pipe joints or insufficient thrust restraint all cause minor leakage in water pipelines. Minor leakage is difficult to eliminate because it is small and distributed. On the other hand, aged or weakened pipes may be broken accidentally because of excessive pressure, external loads, water hammer, frost or construction excavation. This emergency leakage requires rapid attention because large volumes of water may be lost. Potential for damage to other structures due to flooding or soil (slope) failures, or risk to trafKc from flooding or icing of road surfaces is also increased. In addition, in areas of significant traffic congestion, e.g. many Asian cities, it may take one or more hours to dispatch a repair crew to the site.

The proposed model may be used in conjunction with a geographical information system (GIS), a monitoring/alarm system and a remote control valve system to form an integrated leakage detection and control system which can automatically reduce water losses and risks associated with emergency leakage. The proposed model minimizes discrete leakage while satisfying mass and energy conservation constraints. Piezometric pressure heads at the leakage points are the decision variables. The minor leakage problem can be solved as a special case of the discrete leakage minimization problem.