A Mathematical Model for Designing Optimal Urban Gas Networks, an Ant Colony Algorithm and A Case Study

Considering the high costs of the mplementation and maintenance of g as distribu tion networks in urb an areas, optimal design of such networks is vital. Today, u rban gas networks are im plemented within a tr ee structu re. These networks receive gas from City Gate Stations (C GS) and deliver it to t he consum ers. This study presents acompr ehensive model based on Mixe Integer Nonlinear Progra mming ( INLP) for the design of urban gas networks while ta king into ccount topological li mitations,gas pr essure, and velocity and environm ental limita tions. An Ant C lony Opti ization (A CO) algorithm is presented for solving the pro blem, and the results obtaine d by an implem entation of ACO algorithm are compared with the ones obtained thr ough an iterative method to de monstrate the efficiency of ACO algorithm. A case study of a real situati on (gas distribution i Kelardas ht, Iran) affirms the efficacy of the proposed approach.

کلیدواژه ها:

Designing urban networks ، Optimization ، Tree structure ، Ant colony algorithm ، Pressure ، Velocity ، Metaheuris tic algoriths.