OPTIMAL DESIGN OF LARGE SCALE WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS.

This paper presents a methodology for the design of least cost water distribution systems. The advantage of the formulation compared to the other techniques in the literature is that it is capable of designing a complete system rather than solely sizing pipes. It accomplishes this through a variable reduction similar to that employed in optimal control theory and reduced gradient methods. In addition to handling all types of components it is capable of considering a large number of unknowns. Also as discussed to properly design a system more than one loading condition must be considered. The methodology presented allows any number of loadings to be analyzed when determining the optimal solution. By employing the problem reduction technique, a network simulation model in this case, the widely accepted University of Kentucky model, performs the evaluation of the equations which describe the flow and pressure distribution.