Revealing the Topological Drivers of Hydraulic Transients in Water Distribution Networks

The spatiotemporal dynamics of pressure surges is a complex phenomenon involving nonlinear mechanisms such as wave propagation, reflection, and interference. Pipe networks, in particular, pose a challenge in understanding pressure surge patterns. At each junction, where two or more pipe branches meet, an incoming pressure wave interacts with the junction, generating new forward and backward waves further complicating surge behavior. The importance of junctions in shaping pressure surges naturally raises the question of how network topology (e.g., number of junctions, number of branching pipes) influences pressure surge propagation within pipe networks. To investigate this, we conducted a flow transient analysis on a large set of synthetic lattice networks and extracted hydraulic metrics describing head variations at network junctions. We then characterized the connectivity structure of the networks using metrics derived from complex network theory. Finally, we assessed whether topological metrics alone could predict local and global hydraulic transient responses. Our findings show that many hydraulic metrics can be accurately estimated from topological metrics, with a coefficient of determination R2 of up to 0.96. These results underscore the crucial influence of network topology on the transient behavior of pipe systems during operational maneuvers.