Experimental assessment of pressure-leakage relationship in a water distribution network

The use of numerical simulations to improve the management of water distribution networks (WDNs) has dramatically increased in recent decades. Nevertheless, the modeling of leakages is still a major issue to face when setting up a model of a WDN. Because water losses increase at increasing pressure, they are usually modeled by assuming a leakage node behaves like an emitter. Unfortunately, a definitive assessment of the leakage law exponent is as yet lacking in the literature. Consequently, a field analysis was carried out on an existing WDN: (a) to assess whether the power law can effectively represent the relationship between leakage and pressure; and (b) to calculate the value of the exponent. A 3-month measurement campaign was developed, aiming at assessing the dependence of the losses to the pressure. The analysis showed that the power law equation with an exponent around 0.7 can well represent the pressure-leakage relationship.