Otimização de redes do ponto de vista da confiabilidade do sistema de abastecimento de água.

Abstract

Water supply networks constitute the major piece of urban systems investments and their calculation has a narrow connection with services quality. This work introduces an optimization method for economically calculating urban looped networks, using non-linear programming techniques, considering the criterion of reliability for system continuous attendance, even in case of rupture in certain network sections and demand diminish on some networks nodes. In order to apply the method, Bessa district supply system (in João Pessoa, Paraíba) and fictitions network were utilized and the economical calculating was made from PNL 2000 method - using the GRG2 algorithm, wich is based on Generalized Reduced Gradients -, which was choosed by its feasibility and its already known efficiency related to economical calculating of looped networks. The results showed that the method utilized in reliability analysis presented high efficiency in foreseeing system behavior under criticai conditions and that the optimization techniques usage associated to confidence criteria can help in networks design stage, aiming a long term planning, focused at cost reduction and services quality maintenance.