Simulation-based deterioration patterns of water pipelines

Abstract

Water pipelines deteriorate overtime due to several distressing factors. To keep water pipelines in good condition, municipalities need to use reliable and credible deterioration models and inspection plans to better manage their rehabilitation and maintenance. Thus, this paper presents the development of deterioration models and patterns of water pipelines. The deterioration models consider different water pipe sizes and materials as well as different surrounding environmental conditions which affect their deterioration rates. As a prerequisite to the development of such deterioration models, a condition assessment model for water pipelines was first developed. Questionnaires were distributed among experts to determine the weights of the factors affecting water pipeline conditions using the fuzzy analytic network process. Monte-Carlo simulation was used to account for the large uncertainties of the calculated weights in the development of the condition assessment model. The validation of the model, which was performed using historical data, yielded an average validity percentage of 93.59%. The developed models are expected to help municipalities and decision makers to accurately plan for future water pipelines maintenance and rehabilitation activities based on their different deterioration patterns. It takes into consideration both the uncertainties at the initial stage and those accumulated during the calculation process.