Identifying the Bottle-Neck Pipe Mains in a Complex Regional Water Supply System

The water yield of a water supply system is determined with the design criteria of shortage index equal to 1 in Taiwan. Potential water yield of a system can be estimated without considering the capacities of all treatment plants and distributing pipes. Bottle-necks of water mains exist if actual water yield is less than the potential yield. This estimation is complicated if the shortage index of every district is maintained equal or less than 1 in a regional system.

The water supply system of central Taiwan was taken as a case study. A network flow programming based allocation model for simulating water yields of all districts was developed first. A nonlinear optimization scheme was applied to obtain the firm yield to every district with shortage index equal to 1 without any restriction on the capacity of treatment plants and distribution pipes. The bottle-necks of current distribution system was identified by comparing capacities of pipe mains with the maximum transported flow of corresponded pipes in yield analysis.