AUTOMATICAL VERIFICATION OF THE OPERATION OF DRINKABLE WATER AQUEDUCT NETWORKS

SUMMARY

The procedure which is the subject of the present memoir allows us to achieve two ambitious goals: real understanding of the working aqueduct system, with all the consequent advantages, and a constant check of the operation of the system, which makes the supply of drinkable water very safe, and prevents and signals anomalies such as losses and illegal withdrawing of water from the pipes or the reservoirs, wrong usage of the machinery, etc.
We deal with the following subjects, especially from the point of view of their practical achievment:
- the idraulic scheme of the network, whicch is the most important part of the mathematical verrification, since this verification must include all elements which form the network - from pipes to reservoirs to all electro-hydraulic machinery. We present the drawbacks that can originate from the simplification of the scheme and the corrections to be made;
- calculation of instant flowrates deliverred to the users by each node. Being basic in the verification, they can change the final result of all working process. We show which connections should be made with the base of all operating data of the aqueduct, especially with those that show the amount of water consumed by each user;
- calculation of real friction factor of tthe pipes;
- decision, to be taken automatically, aboout calculation stages and methods, resulting from the real usage of the network and from the flowrate required by the users;
- measurement of all hydraulic quantities which interest the aqueduct, such as flowrates and head of the pumping stations, head in the pipes of the network, upstream and downstream all hydraulic machinery, such as pumps, reduction valvs, etc., level in reservoirs, etc.
- applications for automatic input of dataa, calculations (network looped considered in steady flow) and output of the results;
- comparison between the results of calcullations and real data;
- start of an alarm when operating anomaliies occur. The system would show where any failures, losses or operation anomalies occur;
- print of charts, plans and tables about the state of the network and operating data, both detailed and summarized.
In the memoir we draw conclusions about the configuration that the global computer-based system for the managment of aqueduct networks should have, especially to integrate all the functions:
- administrative ones, which would providee flowrate data, necessary for mathematical verification;
- remote control and check systems, which would transmit to the main computer the real operating data to be compared with calculated ones;
- the area assigned to the automatic checkk we described, which would provide the technical area with the necessary information about the operation of the network and the administration with general statistical data.
This organization would require a great economic effort, that could be reduced by creating an open system with several sub-systems which can be reached through a computer-based network, wherever they are located. This way, the system could be used by small aqueducts as well, assuming they install apposite peripherals connected to the centre.
The last porposal in the memoir, but certainly no last for the importance of the results that can be achieved, is the one regarding the connection of the global computer-based network to the Internet, which would allow queries, decisions and operations with the machines in the plants or in the aqueduct network to be made from any of the offices, or even from home or from any computer connected to the Internet.

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