Role Of Transient Pressure Monitoring In Sustainable Management Of Water Distribution Systems

Enclosed flow of water within a pipe can be considered steady, when pressure and flow do not change with time, or when their variations are small with respect to the average of flow. However, the operating condition of water distribution systems is hardly at a true steady state, and it is usually affected by pressure and/or flow disturbances. These disturbances can be associated with production of low and negative pressures, as well as generation of transient pressure waves which can be propagate throughout the distribution system, even in locations far from the source of event. Conventionally, transient analyses were limited to preventing catastrophic failure at pump stations and had less attention to occurrence of transient in the distribution systems. However, studying the effect of transients along the whole system is crucial, as occurrence of low and negative pressure transients may cause adverse impact on structural integrity of the pipeline and persistent pressure and stress fluctuations can contribute to the long-term deterioration of the piping systems. On the other hand, common pressure monitors are limited in terms of collecting high resolution data, as they usually collect data in intervals of seconds or minutes while transients may occur in fractions of seconds and may be missed by such equipment. This paper identifies the hardware needs of an advantageous pressure monitoring system and elucidates the susceptibility of water distribution systems to pressure transient events. The occurrence of transient pressures from several stations in a case study area have been documented, and a statistical analysis has been conducted to evaluate the correlation of pipeline failures with frequency and magnitude of transient events over different stations with various features, operation patterns, and failure histories. The presented results will inform how beneficial and feasible the transient pressure monitoring is in failure mitigating of pipeline systems; and how such data would be advantageous for utilities to make better planning decision about proactive actions to minimize pressure variability across the system, as well as avoiding the consequences of pipe failure.