Methods for Analyzing Pipe Networks

The governing equations for a general network are first set up and then reformulated in terms of matrices. This is developed to show that the choice of model for the flow equations is essential for the behavior of the iterative method used to solve the problem. It is shown that it is better to formulate the flow equations in terms of pipe discharges than in terms of energy heads.

The behavior of some iterative methods is compared in the initial phase with large errors. It is explained why the linear theory method oscillates when the iteration gets close to the solution, and it is further demonstrated that this method offers good starting values for a Newton-Raphson iteration.