Digital Twin of a Hydraulic System with Leak Diagnosis Applications

This paper presents the design and development of a digital twin to diagnose leaks in water distribution networks. The digital twin allows for the remote operation of the hydraulic system's actuators using embedded microcontrollers integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. Pressure head and flow rate measurements are received online in the operator interface, and hydraulic simulations are performed with a well-calibrated EPANET model of the hydraulic system to estimate the pressure head at nodes without sensors. A genetic algorithm was designed to detect and estimate the size of the leaks online. Different experiments were carried out to validate the online application of the method based on the digital twin and under a multi-leak event.