11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer systems
Ming Jin, Ph.D1*, Tom Walski, Ph.D2
2

Advisory Software Architect, Bentley Systems, Inc. 27 Siemon Co. Drive, Watertown, CT 06795, U.S.A. Senior Advisory Product Manager, Bentley Systems, Inc. 27 Siemon Co. Drive, Watertown, CT 06795, U.S.A. *Corresponding author, e-mail Ming.Jin@bentley.com

ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the development of a sophisticated pressure solver within the sewer network unsteady flow dynamic numerical solution engine. The pump characteristic curve and the pressure network system response curve which can be affected by the dynamic hydraulic properties from feeding and receiving gravity systems are considered dynamically so that the accurate pump operating point can be found and used for the system modeling of the interaction between the pressure system and the gravity system. The study compares the results from a few existing dynamic models to show that the new manifold pumping pressure network algorithm provides improved accuracy and robustness.

KEYWORDS
Urban drainage; Sewer network; Dynamic model; Numerical schemes; Pumps; SewerGEMS, Force mains

INTRODUCTION
Wastewater and stormwater hydraulic modelling has increasingly played important role in the water resources and environmental engineering projects and the hydraulic dynamic numerical models are becoming very powerful analysis tools in these engineering modelling studies. Dynamic modeling of sewer and storm systems often involves interaction between gravity sub-networks and pressure force main sub-networks, and the pressure sub-networks typically involve manifold pumping (i.e. more than one pump discharging into a common line). There are two overall approaches to solving pressure pipes in a dynamic wave engine (1. use of Preissmann slot to account for full pipe flow or 2. use of a pressure solver for full pipes). Typical gravity network dynamic solvers (e.g. US EPA SWMM, 2008) use a numerical solution algorithm, either explicit or implicit, to solve the St. Venant unsteady flow equations. However some dynamic sewer models utilizes pressure engine to get accurate solutions (Jin and Fread, 1997; Walski et al., 2005) This study focuses on the development of a modification of the dynamic wave solver within the sewer dynamic engine to solve pressurized pipes, the pump head characteristic curve and the pressure network system response (system head) curve which can also be

Jin, Ming & Walski T.M.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 affected by the feeding and receiving gravity system is considered dynamically so that the accurate pump operating point is found and used for the system modeling of the interaction between the pressure system and the gravity system. The study compares the results from a few existing dynamic models to show that the new manifold pumping pressure network algorithm provides improved accuracy and robustness.

MODEL FORMULATION
Very often a network involves pumps and pressure force main sub-networks and to model such gravity-pressure combined system requires hydraulic models to not only simulate the system dynamic behaviour of both gravity subsystem and pressure subsystem and the hydraulic interactions between gravity and pressure sub-systems. Figure 1 shows a schematic use case of sewer system in which a gravity drainage subsystem collects wastewater or storm water and the water is route into downstream storage facility (wet well), the water is lifted by pump(s) through a force main subsystem and then discharged into further downstream gravity outlet or another gravity sub network.

From hydraulic dynamic modelling point of view, the governing hydraulics for the gravity and pressure sub networks is different, the gravity sub-network is governed by open channel hydraulics while the pressure sub-network is governed by pressure closed conduit hydraulics and the pump hydraulics and pumps play important role in the sub-network hydraulic behaviour. In order to provide reliable numerical modelling solution for sewer or storm network involving pumps and force mains, a sewer dynamic hydraulic model has to be comprehensive and sophisticated to be able to simulate these two different hydraulics features. Gravity Hydraulic Solver For the gravity sub-network, a one-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical model was developed and implemented (Jin etc. 2002). The numerical model uses an implicit four-point, finite-difference solution technique to solve the one-dimensional Saint-Venant equations. Advanced numerical techniques, such as Local Partial Inertial modification (LPI) for subcritical, supercritical, and transitional flows (Jin & Fread, 2000), and relaxation for gravity sewer networks, are used to achieve computational performance and robustness as required for practical use in modeling any complicated sewer or storm network. 2 Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer systems

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 The one-dimensional Saint-Venant equations used in the gravity hydraulic solver in the sewer network model are:

Q (A + A0 ) + -q=0 x t
2 Q ( Q /A) y + + gA( S0 + S f + Si ) + L = 0 t x x

(1)

(2)

in which t is time, x is distance along the longitudinal axis of the waterway, y is the flowdepth, A is the active cross-sectional area of flow, A0 is the inactive (off-channel storage) cross-sectional area of flow, q is the lateral inflow or outflow, is the coefficient for nonuniform velocity distribution within the cross section, g is the gravity constant, S0 is the sewer or channel slope, Sf is the friction slope due to boundary turbulent shear stress and determined by Mannings equation or other friction equations, Si is the slope due to severe local expansion-contraction effects (large eddy loss), and L is the momentum effect of lateral flow. Although these equations were originally developed for gradually varying open channel flows, they can also be applied to gravity and pressure flows in closed conduits in a sewer pipe network. In the case of pressure (surcharged) flows in a sewer conduit, the Preissmann hypothetical open-slot method is used so that Equations 1 and 2 are still applicable. The one-dimensional hydrodynamic unsteady equations are solved by an implicit fourpoint, finite-difference solution scheme with Newton-Raphson iteration technique, an extended relaxation technique is used for network junctions, a LPI technique is used for robust solution on subcritical and supercritical mixed flows. Various internal and external boundary conditions are used to simulated complicated hydraulic controls and outlet structures commonly used in a sewer or storm drainage system. Pressure Hydraulic Solver As an integrated part of the numerical sewer modelling engine, a pressure hydraulic solver is developed for the pump(s) and the pressure (force main) sub network(s). The gravity and pressure hydraulic solvers are solved simultaneously within every time step so that the dynamic hydraulic interactions (inflow to the wet well and backwater effect from downstream gravity system) between the gravity sub network and pressure sub network are fully considered in the integrated numerical engine. Figure 2 shows a schematic use case of a pumping and force main pressure subsystem. The layout of a sewer or storm water pump force main system is typically connected to wet well(s) which is a downstream point of the upstream gravity subsystem. Typical pumps are manifold dynamic-head-dependent pumps in which the pump discharge is a function of the dynamic head characterized by the pump curve. The challenges to accurately simulate the pump-force-main subsystem (Walski et al. 2004) are: Each pump can have its own pump curve

Jin, Ming & Walski T.M.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 Each pump can have its own control schemes The dynamic head of each pump is affected by the system response so that it is also affected by other pumps behaviour Each pump therefore has its own operating point The whole system outflow is therefore very dynamic and dependent of every pump There are interactions with upstream and downstream gravity element hydraulic conditions as well

In order to model these complex scenarios with robustness and accuracy, an iterative relaxation technique is developed. At each time step t during the dynamic computation, all pump outflows, Q1(t), Q2(t) and Q3(t) as shown in Figure 2, are simultaneously iterated in a relaxation way until they converge to a stable value for every pump:
Q(t )i
k +1

= (1 )Q(t )i + Q(t )i
*

(3)

in which i represents the outflow from the pump i, k+1 represents an updated value for the next iteration, and * represents a value determined from the pump curve and current system hydraulic conditions under current k iteration, i.e., the flow value for Q(t)i* is determined using the head difference across the pump from the previous iteration and the pump head characteristic curve. The hydraulic conditions are obtained by solving the force main pipes using current pump outflows, is a relaxation factor (0<<1.0) and =0.8 is found to provide robust and fast converging results.

TEST RESULTS
Extensive tests have been done to test the gravity-pressure integrated sewer dynamic modeling model. The model has been implemented as the primary computation engine in SewerGEMS, Bentley Systems multi-platform (Stand-alone, ArcGIS, MicroStation, AutoCAD) fully dynamic sanitary and combined sewer modeling solution tool. SewerGEMS is an integrated solution for wide range of engineering tasks from urban sewer planning to overflow remediation analysis, to optimized Best Management Practices designs. One of the benchmark tests is reported herein. 4

Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer systems

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 In order to evaluate the models accuracy, robustness and performance for the benchmark test data, two other models are also been run and the results from these three models are compared. The two other models are: A water distribution force main system computational engine used in WaterGEMS, Bentley Systems water distribution solution tool. The engine has been evolved from improvements of the US EPA EPANET engine (Rossman 2000). The test data is designed so that the pressure sub-network is independent of the gravity sub-system effects such as backwater therefore the pressure subsystem can be also modeled by the water distribution pressure engine and its results is considered to be most accurate and reliable. The US EPA SWMM (Rossman, 2007) dynamic sewer model, the computation engine in the SWMM model is also based on the one dimensional hydrodynamic unsteady flow equations and has been constantly improved during years of development efforts by EPA.

Figure 3 shows the schematic of the test gravity-pressure sewer network, there are three gravity sub-networks and one pressure force main sub-network. In the pressure system there are three pump stations (and wet wells) with each having a single pump.

Figure 3 Benchmark test schematic 5

Jin, Ming & Walski T.M.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 All these three pumps are of inline-head-flow type (TYPE 3 pump in SWMM and Multi Point Pump in WaterGEMS); Figure 4 shows the dynamic pump curve used.

Figure 4 Dynamic Pump Curve

Test Scenario 1: One pump is active

In this scenario only one pump, PMP-1 in the system, is actively in operation so that the force main and pump system is a simple one-branch pressure network.

Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer systems

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

Some computational results from the model are shown in Figs 5 and 6; the results from both SWMM and WaterGEMS models are also shown in these figures. It can be seen that the results from these three models are in agreement for this simplest scenario while the SWMM model produced some minor instabilities.

Jin, Ming & Walski T.M.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 In the calculations reported in Figs 5 and 6, the SewerGEMS DW (Dynamic Wave) engine and WaterGEMS pressure engine use a time step of 0.01 hour (36 seconds), the SWMM engine has to use much smaller time step to reach an acceptable stable solution therefore a time step of 1 second is used (only in SWMM) to achieve the results shown in Figs 5 and 6. Because the DW engine is an implicitly-scheme based numerical solver it remains robust even with larger time steps, the computation sensitivities in time steps between DW and SWMM engine can be seen from Figure 7 by comparing with the results in Figure 5 (36 vs. 180 for DW and 1 vs. 30 for SWMM in the time steps used).

Test Scenario 2: Two pumps are active

In this scenario the two pumps in the system, PMP-1 and PMP-2, are actively in operation, the computed flows at the outlet pipe, P-4, from the three models are shown in Figure 8, it can be seen that the result from the SWMM model starts to differ significantly when the multiple pumps are involved in the simulation while other two models provide consistent results.

Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer systems

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

Test Scenario 3: All three pumps are active

In this scenario all three pumps are actively in operation and the results from the three models are shown in Figure 9. The results from SewerGEMS DW engine are very close to those from the WaterGEMS pressure engine and the results of SWMM model can be seen to be not stable and reliable for this multiple pumping scenario.

CONCLUSIONS
Hydrodynamic modeling of sewer networks typically involves pumping and pressure force main sub network(s), it is very important that a hydrodynamic numerical model provides robust and reliable numerical schemes to solver gravity and pressure combined system. This study developed a practical integrated solution to solve the problem; the numerical model developed in this study combines following modeling techniques to dynamically solve the gravity-pressure combined system: An implicit four-point, finite-difference solution technique to solve the onedimensional Saint-Venant equations for all gravity sub networks An relaxation type iteration method to solve the pump equations and pressure force mains using pressure pipe hydraulics 9

Jin, Ming & Walski T.M.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008 The two numerical solvers are dynamically solved at every time step for the whole sewer system so that the hydraulic interactions between the gravity sub network(s) and pressure force main sub network(s) are fully considered

Extensive tests have shown that the integrated hydrodynamic sewer model can provide robust and reliable solutions for modeling sewer systems.

REFERENCES
Jin, M & Fread, D. L. (1997), Dynamic flood routing with explicit and implicit numerical solution schemes, Journal of Hydraulic Eng., ASCE, 123(3), 166-173. Jin, M & Fread, D. L. (2000), Discussion on the Application of Relaxation Scheme to Wave-Propagation Simulation in Open-Cannel Networks, Journal of Hydraulic Eng., ASCE, 126(1), 89-91. Jin, M, Coran, S & Cook, J (2002), New One-Dimensional Implicit Numerical Dynamic Sewer and Storm Model, In: Strecker E.W. and Huber W.C. (eds.): Global solutions for urban drainage. Proc. 9th Int. Conf. on Urban Drainage, Portland, Oregon, 8-13 September 2002. CD-ROM, ASCE Publications, Reston, VA Rossman, L.A. (2000), EPANET 2 Users Manual, US EPA pub: EPA/600/R-00/0570, RMRL, Cincinnati, Oh. Rossman, L.A. (2007), Storm Water Management Model Users Manual Version 5.0, US EPA pub: EPA/600/R-05/040, Revised 2007 RMRL, Cincinnati, Oh Walski, T.M., Chase D.V., Savic D., Grayman W.M., Beckwith S., Koelle E., (2004), Advanced Water Distribution Modeling and Management, Bentley Institute Press Walski, T.M., Barnard T.E., Merritt L.B., Harold E., Walker N., Whitman B.E., (2005), Wastewater Collection System Modelling and Design, Bentley Institute Press

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Dynamic modeling technique of interaction between pressure and gravity sewer