Head-Driven Simulation Model (HDSM) for water distribution system calibration

In order to reproduce the behavior of water distribution networks, calibration models have been proposed. They normally do not consider the relationship between pressure and leakage, as well as the dependence of demand on pressure in a water distribution system. In this paper, we seek to extend the calibration process through the development of a hydraulic simulation model based on leakage and pressure-dependent demands with support of the hydraulic simulator EPANET 2 (Rossman 2000). A hypothetical network was used to calibrate the model in terms of the absolute roughness of pipes and the parameters of the leakage model, simultaneously. The Simplex search method was used to improve the solutions obtained by Genetic Algorithms (GAs), successfully reproducing the nodal pressures and pipe flows values taken as reference to the calibration process.