Operation and control of a water supply system

The control of water supply systems is becoming more important, since there are increasing requirements to improve operation. A need exists to model and simulate water supply systems so that their behavior can be fully understood and the total process optimized. This paper describes the simulation and control of a water supply system consisting of a sequence of pumping stations that deliver water through pipelines to intermediate storage reservoirs. The system is represented by dominant system variables that represent active and passive dynamical elements. The hydraulic models include the nonlinear coupling between flow rates and reservoir heads. The bisection numerical solution approach is used to obtain a roughness dependent friction coefficient. The whole system is simulated and the results are presented and compared with the real-time measured data. A water level controller using the robust polynomial H(infinity) optimization method by manipulating pump speed is obtained. The stochastic nature of the disturbance and loads is considered for controller design. The parametrized dynamic weighting functions of the design theory are selected to achieve the required control functions and robustness.