Method of estimating fracture point of pipe line network

Abstract

In a method of estimating a fracture point of a pipe line network, a group of estimating rules based on distribution characteristics of extraordinary pressure variation, pipe line characteristics and flow continuity requirements in a fracture accident monitoring system for such networks represented by a large scale water distribution pipe line network are applied to reference data of flow rates and pressures both obtained in the normal consumption condition, and to measured data of the flow rate and the pressure to estimate the fracture point. In the method, application order of individual ones of the group of the estimating rules is decided in accordance with data conditions of the pipe line network. In the case that a range of a set of suspected abnormal joints can not be reduced sufficiently to the extent of a practical tolerance limit, a numerical simulation which supposes the existence of fracture on a certain joint in the set of suspected abnormal joints is conducted to further reduce the range of the set of suspected abnormal joints through a comparison between results of the numerical simulation and measured results. In order to increase an estimating speed, a parallel processing is conducted for the estimating rules which utilize only local data in the pipe line network, by way of a plurality of the special purpose reasoning processors.