IMPROVED ESTIMATION OF PIPE LEAKAGE FOR VARIOUS LEAK GEOMETRY

Abstract eng:
Past earthquakes show that a majority of pipe damages occur as leaks. A leak is essentially the discharge of an opening in the pipe wall from which water is discharged into the surrounding soil. Estimation of leakage discharge is an influencing factor in performance evaluation of water supply system in the immediate aftermath of large earthquakes in populated cities. For this purpose, estimation of the discharge with an acceptable precision is important. So far, few researchers have worked on this issue and have developed some software and have applied their computer programs for modeling the performance of water supply systems after major earthquakes without completely addressing the geometry of the opening. In this paper, in order to evaluate the seismic performance of water supply systems more reliably, a modification is proposed for Torricelli formula by implementing which, the leakage discharge of the pipe opening can be estimated with higher precision. For this purpose the opening discharge is calculated through modeling pipe and opening by finite volume method based on Navier-Stokes equations. As a result, the leakage amount can now be determined more precisely. The model has been validated and the computation is verified by means of laboratory experiments.

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