Transient Measurement Site Design in Pipe Networks Using the Decision Table Method (DTM)

The accuracy of leak detection and calibration of pipe networks by means of the inverse transient analysis (ITA) is highly affected by the number and location of the measurement sites. This study introduces a conceptual decision-making model, the Decision Table Method (DTM), for measurement site design of pipe networks with the aim of inverse transient analysis. Through the Decision Table Method, near optimum measurement sites are decided based on two criteria of the maximum sensitivity of measurement sites and the maximum diversity of sensitivity with respect to unknown parameters of leak areas and friction factors. The main advantage of DTM is that even in case of large networks, calculation of the Hessian matrix and the utilization of any optimization algorithm are not required. To evaluate the efficiency and applicability of the method, it is applied on two pipe networks of small and large size from the literature and the results are compared with the previous methods. Accordingly, the DTM is found reliable as well as easy to understand and implement.