Computer-aided probabilistic flow analysis of water pipe networks under earthquake events

Abstract

This paper proposes a computer-aided probabilistic flow analysis framework for water pipe networks under an earthquake event. The framework involves a two-step procedure. The first step is an automated hydraulic modeling of a water pipe network that has pipelines damaged by the ground shaking in an earthquake. The second step is a system level probabilistic flow analysis based on the Matrix-based System Reliability (MSR) formulation, which estimates, separately, the system-level flow quantities of network pipes and the system damage state probabilities. The system-level quantities evaluated can be re-used to achieve computational cost savings for different seismic damage scenarios, and the system-level probabilities need to be updated. The proposed framework is demonstrated in a water pipe network with 11 pipe segments under an earthquake event, and the statistical moments and the probability of water flows in several pipes are estimated using the proposed framework.