In recent years, iterative computational techniques have been considered as the most effective methods to tackle the problem of Water Distribution System (WDS) minimum-cost design. Given their stochastic nature, these approaches involve a large number of hydraulic simulations in order to obtain suitable results. Herein, a WDS design methodology based entirely on hydraulic principles is presented. This methodology, named Optimal Power Use Surface (OPUS), focuses on both reaching low-cost designs and diminishing the number of hydraulic executions (iterations), by establishing efficient ways in which energy is dissipated and flow is distributed throughout the system. The algorithm was tested in four well known benchmark networks, previously reported in the literature. OPUS proved that following hydraulic principles is a fair choice to design WDS, showing plenty of potential in other water distribution mathematical modeling applications and offering an alternative for the extensive search process undertaken by metaheuristics.

中文翻译：

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基于电力使用的供水管网近乎优化设计的直接方法

近年来，迭代计算技术被认为是解决配水系统（WDS）最小成本设计问题的最有效方法。鉴于其随机性，这些方法涉及大量水力模拟以获得合适的结果。在此，提出了一种完全基于液压原理的 WDS 设计方法。这种称为最佳功率使用表面 (OPUS) 的方法通过建立有效的方式来耗散能量和在整个系统中分配流量，从而实现低成本设计和减少液压执行（迭代）的次数。该算法在四个众所周知的基准网络中进行了测试，之前在文献中报道过。OPUS 证明遵循液压原理是设计 WDS 的合理选择，