Performance between the Hydraulic Gradient Method and the Perturbation Method for the Analysis of Water Supply Networks

Abstract

The HGM (Hydraulic Gradient Method), it is used in most of the current commercial software, such as EPANET, WaterCAD, MikeNet, among others, the same that corresponds to an iterative method that depends on initial estimated parameters and programming structures that ensure convergence to obtain results with the highest precision, in addition to this the method makes use of non-linear equation systems. Likewise, the execution time for large extensions of water distribution networks is considerably high. On the other hand, the PM (Perturbation Method), is a new direct solution method, which makes use of principles of quantum mechanics to transform nonlinear equations into simpler linear systems. Obtaining a simple and robust optimization method that only requires simple and direct mathematical processes. Using the MathCad and Python programming languages as a verification tool, multiple tests were carried out, the results for the hydraulic parameters showing that the flow rates and pressures obtained by the HGM and the PM are extremely similar, in the same way the execution time (time run) have been 77.09% favorable to the PM. In other words, the PM presents efficiency to estimate the hydraulic characteristics such as the pressures at the nodes and the velocities in the pipes of the drinking water distribution networks.