Experimental Assessment of Leakage in Water Distribution Network

Water is one of the most important and scarce resources needed to sustain life. Wasting this invaluable resource will have negative impacts on humans and the environment. Producing potable water requires significant energy and hence a huge budget, therefore water leakage from distribution networks could lead to financial instability. To prevent this, water leakage must be detected, minimized, and controlled. This paper presents a dimensionless mathematical model that relates pressure drop to leakage in a water distribution system. The relationship was achieved through an experimental setup at the American University of Sharjah. The dimensionless relationship between pressure drops percentile and the flow ratio were obtained exponentially. The proposed dimensionless model correlated well with all experimental data and calculated the pressure drop with the amount of leakage within 10% accuracy in all pipe diameters. This model provides a basis for an easy and efficient method to detect leakage in pipe systems without the need for expensive equipment.