Finite Element Method with Applications in Engineering

6.11 FURTHER ONE-DIMENSIONAL APPLICATIONS

6.11.1 Flow Network Analysis

Flow of fluid through pipes is often required to be examined for municipal water supply, sewage networks, chemical flows in factories etc., where usually a network consisting of a large number of pipes, pumps, valves etc are involved. A large number of pipe elements of uniform cross sections and pipe junctions and other elements are usually utilized in a flow network. Flow in a pipe network can be considered as one-dimensional as the flow is predominant in the direction of flow. Simple pipe networks can be analysed using analytical/approximation based methods like Hardy-Cross method and Newton Raphson method (Streeter et al., 1998). However, for complex pipe networks FEM can ...