Optimisation procedure for pipe-sizing with break-repair and replacement economics

Abstract

The importance of incorporating break-repair costs and pipe-replacement costs in optimal design of a water distribution net work is highlighted and demonstrated with a hypothetical network. Deterioration due to ageing of pipes requires expensive maintenance and causes inconvenience. The number of breaks generally increases exponentially with pipe age and smalldiameter pipes are more likely to break than large-diameter pipes. After a certain age, it would be more cost-effective to replace the pipes than to repair them. The optimisation models which do not consider the maintenance costs tend to result in smaller pipe sizes. The proposed model incorporates both the repair cost and the replacement cost in addition to initial cost. The proposed model is demonstrated by applying it to a 2-loop network. Incorporating pipe-break and replacement economics into optimisation leads to slightly larger diameter pipes.

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