Water losses due to leakage are a pernicious problem for water utilities. Understanding and quantifying Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and water loss components is the first step in the management of urban water losses. Hydraulic modeling is a powerful tool to predict the impacts of different management scenarios on the hydraulics of the Water Distribution Network (WDN). The water distribution network (WDN) can be divided into a number of District Meter Areas (DMAs) with suitable sizes in order to apply pressure management. In this study, the Fixed Area Variable Area Discharge (FAVAD) concept and the number of leaks were analyzed for a number of water network pressure management areas in the city of Bendjerrah – the district of Guelma, Algeria. The analysis identified some anomalies concerning the parameters of some networks; especially those related to leakage exponent N1 values greater than 1.5. The approach used in this framework is based on the estimation of the leakage from the Minimum Night Flow (MNF) and the burst frequency of Average Zonal Pressure (AZP). After the use of this approach and the calibration procedure using the Epanet-calibrator on real District Meter Areas, the obtained results are very close to the real state of the network. In addition, this paper studies the possibility of explicitly incorporating the variation of the leakage zone in the hydraulic modeling of the water distribution systems. The results show that the power equation leakage exponent N1 estimates the total system leakage with an error of up to 20%. From the Minimum Night Flow, obtained by using the South African Night Flow (SANFLOW) practical tool, it was found that the actual losses calculated for sectors 1, 2, and 3 are respectively 25%, 45%, and 30%.

In the geotechnical engineering field, shallow foundations are frequently needed to ensure good fieldwork stability. They are also intended to permanently and uniformly transmit all load pressure on the seating floor. However, numerous mechanical constraints, such as bearing capacity of foundations, durability, stability, design of shallow foundations, lead, unfortunately, to a serious realization challenge. Finding an adequate solution presents the main goal and effort of both scholars and professionals. Indeed, the corresponding drawback is observed through the high number of reported damages that occurred in the structure of foundations and the punching failure. The failure mechanisms of shallow foundations, verified in full size or on scale models, show “sliding surfaces” and rigid (solid) blocks, which can be described with the kinematic method of rigid solids. The main objective of this study is the application of the kinematic method of rigid solids in the study of the stability of shallow foundations with respect to punching, the purpose of which is to determine the bearing capacity factors Nc, N γ, and the passive earth pressure coefficient Kp of foundations. In this context, two mechanical models have been proposed with 5 and 7 rigid solids, and a program developed via the MathCAD environment is applied to check the validity of the two previous models. The kinematic method of rigid solids gives results very close and comparable with that of Caquot/Kerisel for the factors of the bearing capacity and passive earth pressure coefficient - the ratio Kp - according to the five- and seven-solid model.