OPTIMAL DESIGN OF AIR VESSEL FOR WATER HAMMER PROTECTION IN WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

Air vessels are widely used in water distribution system to protect from pump power failure. The process of sizing air vessels is very important in obtaining the most economical vessel size and correct size of inlet/outlet pipe diameters that will protect the pipe system. This paper presents the developed model TRANSNETP that is used in analyzing transient flow due to pump power failure in pipe network system using air vessel as a protection device and also determining the optimal volume and optimal inlet/outlet pipe diameter for air vessel that is required to protect the distribution system against pump power failure and satisfying the required constrains of minimum pressure head and maximum over pressure head envelopes on all pipes in the network using the Shuffled Complex Evolution optimization method.