INVESTIGATION OF USAGE OF VELOCITY AND PRESSURE DATA WITHIN A WATER DISTRIBUTION LAB MODEL FOR CALIBRATING HYDRAULIC MODELS

Water distribution modeling for hydraulics and water quality is an important tool for managing system performance of water utilities. An important component of a water distribution model is the calibration of a network model with field data in the real world system. The calibration effort requires a protocol or selection criteria for the location of field measurements that best support the calibration effort. A water distribution model was constructed at the University of Kentucky hydraulics lab for the purpose of investigating the performance of water distribution models. The lab model contains numerous hydraulic (pressure, flows) and water quality (concentrations) sensors for measuring system characteristics. This research work utilizes the lab model to compare hydraulic calibration using pressure heads from hydraulic data, velocities from water quality data, and combinations of both as the basis of calibration. It also presents an example of a small experimental system where velocity data as a basis for a calibration effort and pressure based data as a basis doesn’t converge to the same solution. The results of the research demonstrate the necessity of using both velocity & pressure data for hydraulic calibration to avoid compensating errors