Abstract
This paper presents a two- phase search scheme for optimal pipe expansion of expansion of existing water distribution systems. In pipe network problems, link flows affect the total cost of the system because the link flows are not uniquely determined for various pipe diameters. The two-phase search scheme based on stochastic optimization scheme is suggested to determine the optimal link flows which make the optimal design of existing pipe network. A sample pipe network is employed to test the proposed method. Once the best tree network is obtained, the link flows are perturbed to find a near global optimum over the whole feasible region. It should be noted that in the perturbation stage the loop flows obtained form the sample existing network are employed as the initial loop flows of the proposed method. It has been also found that the relationship of cost-hydraulic gradient for pipe expansion of existing network affects the total cost of the sample network. The results show that the proposed method can yield a lower cost design than the conventional design method and that the proposed method can be efficiently used to design the pipe expansion of existing water distribution systems.
