Dynamic simulation of sewage system for urban planning
Basic information
Project ID: AEE-2017-31
Students: Niilo Metsänen, Miia Rantala, Lauri Lehtimäki
Project manager: Lauri Lehtimäki
Instructor: Gerardo Santillan
Other advisors: Tommi Karhela
Starting date: 5.1.2017
Completion date: 29.5.2017
Objective
As the amount of people living in urban environments continually increase, the infrastructure to provide for the inhabitants must be built and maintained. There are several difficulties in determining the required capacity: availability of measurement data, changing weather conditions, and time-varying usage profiles. In a sewage system there are vast amounts of piping, some of it decades old, and it is unfeasible to install extensive sensoring to completely measure the system. Based on the particular properties of an area natural elements, such as rain or melting snow, can cause leakage into the sewage system and increase the amount of water present. Depending on the time of year, and even on the day of the week, the amount of sewage running in the system can vary drastically. In the face of these problems additional methods for measuring the sewage capacity of a sewage system are required to provide more accurate capacity estimates when expanding existing neighbourhoods or planning a new district.
In this project the approach of using dynamic simulation software to simulate sewage systems is explored. The software used is Apros. The project was done in co-operation with HSY and VTT.
Summary of results
A simulation model of Tuulitie area in Vantaa was created using Apros. The parameters for the model were based on aggregate data provided by HSY, and the results were compared against detailed data on several days in March. The simulation results closely resembled the real measurement data, and it can therefore be said that dynamic simulation software is a valid approach to the problem. The effects of rainwater on the system were also created in the model. Due to there being unexpectedly little correlation between rainfall and sewage flow in the Tuulitie area, finding parameters and validating the addition of rain into the model could not be completed in the scope of this project.
Documents
Poster shown in the final gala: Poster