Abstract

BARRON CORVERA, Antonio; ALVARADO MEDELLIN, Pedro; BAUTISTA CAPETILLO, Carlos  and  BADILLO-ALMARAZ, Hiram. A computational tool to pipe network design. Acta univ [online]. 2021, vol.31, e3093.  Epub June 20, 2022. ISSN 2007-9621.  https://doi.org/10.15174/au.2021.3093.

The growing water demand represents a major worldwide problem; consequently, there exists an upward understanding regarding the efficient use of water. Thus, new techniques, methodologies, and computational algorithms are developed to increase the efficiency of water use. This paper presents a new computational model developed in the programming language Visual C# to design water supply pipe networks (RedesUAZ) based on the matrix analysis of structures using the stiffness method. Although it arose from the need for public universities with free access to didactic resources for student training, this tool is useful to design small, pressurized networks in practice. To assess its performance, the proposed model was compared with two well-known models with the same purpose (A1: Huddleston et al. [2004] / RedesUAZ; A2: EPANET / RedesUAZ). It can be said that hydraulic results are comparable to each other. The results of the analysis of the three proposals show small relative differences in flows (A1: 6.01%, A2: 10.83%), velocities (A2: 21.31%), and pressures (A2: 1.12%). It is concluded that the proposed model is an acceptable alternative for the analysis and design of hydraulic systems that conduct pressurized water.

Keywords : Matrix stiffness method; pressure networks design; visual C#.

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