DIMENSIONAMENTO OTIMIZADO DE REDES PREDIAIS DE ÁGUA ...

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ABSTRACT
The main objective of this work is to allow designers to use EPANET on building
pipe sizing following the Brazilian standards method. EPANET was originally
built for urban drink water networks and might be used for building cold water
networks as well. This software uses some data informed by the user such as
demands at the nodes, pipes diameter and length. Nevertheless, urban
networks have some differences in matter of water uses. The water
consumption in buildings is intermittent, that is, the pipes shouldn't be sized
considering only the characteristic demands of the devices, since it might cause
pipes over sizing. The Brazilian standards methodology consider the devices
demands as weights that are, in fact, probabilities of simultaneous water uses
which are converted in water flows by an empirical formula. In despite of using
different concepts for flows calculations, EPANET is a worldwide used software,
and it has an open source code, which allows users to modify its code if
needed. This is the motivation of using it on this study. In this work it was
developed a methodology that creates fictitious demands for the nodes which,
when summed, coincide with the real flow calculated by the method stablished
by the brazilian standards. It was used an optimal sizing model developed in the
Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB) called LENHSNET and the traditional
method for the net sizing (trial an error).