A novel ‘pressure index’ for predicting number of pipe bursts in water distribution system

Abstract

This paper presents the application of hydraulic modelling for the prediction of pipe bursts in a water distribution system (WDS). As a case study, more than 1430 km of pipelines within 29 water pressure zones (PZs) in Bendigo and Castlemaine WDSs, located in Victoria, Australia, were modelled and calibrated using an InfoWorks WS hydraulic model. A pressure index (PI) was defined to quantify the intensity of high pressures in the WDS pipes. The PIs for all the PZs were calculated using hydraulic model simulations. Ten years of actual pipe burst data (2007–2017) in the studied WDSs were used in the research. A burst index (BI) was used to measure the burst rate for the length of pipe network within the study area. A mathematical relationship between PI and BI was proposed based on the first eight years (2007–2015) of burst data and the results of the hydraulic modelling in the same period. The number of pipe bursts for the last two years (2016–2017) in each PZ was then predicted according to the proposed mathematical relationship. The predicted number of bursts fitted well with the actual recorded pipe burst data, with a coefficient of determination of 0.98.