Advanced Loop-flow Method for Fast Hydraulic Simulations

Solution of the nonlinear system of equations describing the network hydraulics problem can be formulated in several different manners, yielding various methods of solution. The most popular formulation is probably the Global Gradient Algorithm (GGA). Loop-flow formulation is another method revisited by number of researchers in recent years. Loop-flow method has the smaller system matrix to solve, which is a benefit over the GGA’s matrix, coming from the fact that real networks typically have far less loops than nodes. However, need for cumbersome pre-processing to identify network loops and sparsity of solution matrix, which is highly dependent of implemented loop identification algorithm, remain key drawbacks of existing loop-flow methods. In addition, systematic testing on the real life networks of different topologies and complexities is still somewhat lacking in the literature. In this paper, new loop-flow type method based on the novel TRIangulation BAsed Loop identification algorithm (TRIBAL) coupled with efficient implementation of loop-flow based hydraulic solver (ΔQ) is presented. Performance of the new TRIBAL ΔQ method based solver is tested through the comparison with the reference GGA solver. Preliminary results show that significant calculation speedups can be achieved with proposed method, maintaining prediction accuracy and convergence of the reference solver.