Damage Tolerance Analysis of Water Distribution Networks with Different Orders of Failure

Damage or failure is an inevitable event which should be considered in all decisions taken at planning-, design-, operation- and maintenance-level for a water distribution network (WDN). So far several studies are conducted about reliability analysis in literature, but very little attention is paid to the damage tolerance analysis (DTA) of WDNs with different orders of failures. This may be due to the heavy and extremely time consuming computational workloads commonly required for DTA. In this study required relationships for DTA of WDNs with different orders of failure are derived. Additionally some equations are proposed to estimate the possible errors in these relationships. Then an attempt was made to evaluate the damage tolerance of sixteen designs of a hypothetical WDN with different orders of failure. The results indicate that application of the proposed equations of this study could significantly prevent redundant and unnecessary hydraulic simulations which may complicate the DTA of WDNs. Moreover the results reveal that the tolerance of the WDN to various orders of failures gradually decreases by decreasing the diameters of pipes. Comparing the damage tolerance of a network with different orders of failure, one could estimate the sensitivity of a WDN to simultaneous failures.