72757 - Advanced Hydrosystems Engineering

Academic Year 2015/2016

  • Moduli: Cristiana Bragalli (Modulo 1) Andrea Bolognesi (Modulo 2) Vittorio Di Federico (Modulo 3)
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures (Modulo 1) Traditional lectures (Modulo 2) Traditional lectures (Modulo 3)
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Civil Engineering (cod. 8895)

    Also valid for Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Environmental Engineering (cod. 8894)

Learning outcomes

A successful learner from this course will be able to: a) deal with the most actual and urgent hydraulic and environmental problems connected with water supplies and drainage systems; design and operate urban water systems, taking into account: i) advanced design procedures and technological findings; ii) environmental and economic issues; and iii) construction site aspects; the b) apply basic modelling and computational techniques for addressing reliability analysis and risk assessment in civil engineering, with special emphasis on the water sector.

Course contents

MODULE 1 - Water Supply Systems
General aspects of water supply systems: sources of potable water, networks layout and components.
Water distribution modeling
Water consumption modeling
Operations and control of water distribution systems
Water quality investigation and modeling
Energy management
Water losses monitoring and control
Design criteria for water supply systems
Optimization techniques applied to water supply systems
Water – energy nexus


MODULE 2 - Urban Drainage Systems
Overview of drainage systems
Planning of urban separate and combined drainage systems
Hydrologic cycle in urban areas
Estimating storm runoff and domestic sewage design discharges
Traditional and advanced design of urban drainage systems
Water quality issues in urban areas
Detention ponds and first flush tanks
Operation and maintenance of urban drainage systems


MODULE 3 - Uncertainty & Risk in Hydraulic Systems
Introduction. Syllabus. Objectives. Starting definitions on risk and uncertainty, also applied to hydrosystems. Introduction to risk analysis. Introductory concepts in probability theory. Conditional probability.

Reliability. Reliability measures. State variable. Time to failure. Reliability function. Mean time to failure distributions: exponential and Weibull.  Failures, failure classification, failure causes classification. Failure modes: pump, water tap, further examples. Reparable systems. Repair probability, density and rate. Mean time to repair. Availability. Mean time between failures. System reliability: series and parallel configuration. Redundancy. Example calculations.  Overview of techniques in reliability analysis: RBA, FT, MC. Pipe breaks and reliability analysis of a water supply system.

FMECA. Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis model. Overview, purpose, approaches, main steps. System structure analysis and worksheets. Risk priority numbers and criticality analysis. Severity, occurrence, and detection classifications. Application to pumping stations.

FTA. Fault Tree Analysis structure. Boundary conditions, assumptions and limitations. FTA construction and logic symbols. Identification of top event. Adding events. Examples. Boolean algebra. Boolean operations, functions and expressions. Duality. Laws of boolean algebra. Rules of boolean algebra. Logic gates. Exercises on Boolean algebra. Applications. Minimal cutsets. Properties of cut sets. Cut set examples. Finding cut sets: top-down and bottom-up approaches. Importance measures. Calculation of probability of failure and importance measures. Application of FTA to groundwater contamination.

Readings/Bibliography

T. M. WALSKY, D.V. CHASE, D.A. SAVIC Water distribution modeling, 1st Edition, Heasted press, 2001.
M. FARLEY, S. TROW Losses in water distribution networks, 1st Edition, IWA Publishing, 2003.
D. BUTLER, J. W. DAVIES Urban Drainage, 3rd Edition, Spon press, 2011.
Y.-K- TUNG, B.C. YEN, C. S. MALCHING Hydrosystems Engineering Reliability Assessment and Risk Analysis, , Mc Graw Hill, 2005

Teaching methods

Lectures, tutorials, expert seminars and laboratory visits.

Assessment methods

Written test: multiple choice questions, open questions or short exercises.
Oral test: discussion of written test results, eventual additional questions.
Evaluation and discussion of homeworks.

Teaching tools

In addition to the reference books, the presentations and lecture notes on the topics covered during the course, published in AMS Campus - AlmaDL University of Bologna, and computer codes for the development of the exercises will be available.

Module 1 - Water Supply Systems
codice di calcolo EPANET - Hydraulic and Water Quality Behavior of Water Distribution Piping Systems
http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/dw/epanet.html

Module 2 - Urban Drainage Systems
codice di calcolo SWMM (Storm Water Management Model)
http://www.epa.gov/athens/wwqtsc/html/swmm.html

Office hours

See the website of Cristiana Bragalli

See the website of Andrea Bolognesi

See the website of Vittorio Di Federico