Optimum Design of Interbasin Pipe System (RESEARCH NOTES)

Pipe systems are often used to transfer moderate to medium water volumes between reservoirs or from well fields to consumers. Such systems consisting of an arbitrary number of reservoirs or other types of sources and sinks are considered here. The Lagrangean optimization principle is used for the determination of all pipe diameters giving minimum total cost of the system, when the individual discharges/recharges from/to reservoirs, elevations of the water surfaces or piezometric heads of all reservoirs, and the cost of pipes per unit length are known. Both the energy loss due to friction and the local energy loss due to gates, bends, etc. are taken into consideration. Turbulent flow in the rough flow range is assumed, i.e., the wall Reynolds number is in excess of seventy. The method may also be adapted to open channel systems, tunnel systems, or combined systems.