Control optimization for liquid pipelines under leak condition

Apart from posing a threat to people's security, liquid pipeline leak will generate a large scale of environmental pollution, taking its toll for individuals and enterprises. An active control can minimize the impact. The hydraulic system of a pipeline is rather complex under leak condition, making it difficult to work out a plan for the optimal control scheme of pipeline's hydraulic devices. Researchers have proposed a series of methods to solve the optimal control scheme of a leak pipeline, few of which have taken complex transient process into consideration. The paper proposes a mixed-integer linear programming model to address the problem, and applies the branch and bound algorithm for model solution. The objective of the model is to find out an optimal control scheme to reduce the leakage volume to minimum. The transient process, hydraulic constraints, device constraints and flow rate constraints are considered in the model and the branch and bound algorithm is used to solve the model. Experiments on a real-world liquid pipeline have demonstrated the practicability and high reliability of the proposed model.