Application of linear programming for looped water supply pipe network design

It has been indicated in the literature that looped water distribution systems designed with the linear programming (LP) optimisation technique are converted into tree-like structures resulting in the disappearance of the original geometry in the final design. Looped networks are provided for system reliability, thus such a design approach will defeat the basic purpose of looped systems provision. Such a limitation has hindered the application of LP for the design of looped water supply networks. A method for the design of a looped water distribution system has been developed such that the loop configuration of the network is maintained by bringing all the pipes of the network into the optimisation problem formulation using the LP optimisation method.