Thursday, March 27, 2014

SWMM 5.1 Update History Or Key Changes

SWMM 5.1 Update History
http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/wq/models/swmm/#Downloads

Build 5.1.002
-----------------------
Engine Updates:

1.  A bug that prevented hotstart files with the latest format
    from being read was fixed.

2.  Only non-ponded surface area is saved for use in the dynamic
    wave surcharge algorithm (when water depth is close to the
    node's crown elevation). 

GUI Updates:

1.  Creation of auxilary forms on startup was moved from the
    main form's OnActivate event to its OnCreate event, while
    creation of the map form was moved tothe OnShow event.

2.  The routines for saving and reading the main form's position
    and size in the swmm5 .ini file were modified.

3.  A memory leak related to copying cells from the grid editor
    used in various dialogs was fixed.
-----------------------
Build 5.1.001
-----------------------
Engine Updates

New Features:
=============
1.  SWMM can now read the new file format for precipitation
    data retrieved online from NOAA-NCDC.

2.  A new choice of infiltration method, the Modified Horton
    method, has been added. This method uses the cumulative
    infiltration in excess of the minimum rate as its state
    variable (instead of time along the Horton curve),
    providing a more accurate infiltration estimate when
    low rainfall intensities occur.

3.  RDII interface files created internally by SWMM are now
    saved in a binary format to reduce storage space. The ASCII
    text format for these files is still supported for users
    that find it desireable to create the files outside of SWMM.

4.  Two new categories of LID controls, one for Green Roofs and
    another for Rain Gardens, have been added so they no longer
    have to be configured from the Bio-Retention Cell control
    (although that option still remains). The Green Roof uses
    a new Drainage Mat layer to store and convey the water that
    percolates through the soil layer.

5.  Users can now add their own groundwater outflow equation to
    a subcatchment, to be used in place of or in addition to the
    standard equation. Similar to treatment functions, the equation
    can be any mathematical expression that uses the same ground-
    water variables that appear in the standard equation.

6.  Evaporation of water from open channels has been added.

7.  A new conduit property named Seepage Rate (in/hr or mm/hr)
    has been added to model uniform seepage along the bottom
    and sloped sides of a conduit.

8.  Infiltration from storage units is now referred to as
    seepage, to be consistent with seepage from conduits. The
    only required parameter is a seepage rate (in/hr or mm/hr).
    Previous data files that supply a set of Green-Ampt
    infiltration parameters will still be recognized.

9.  Separate accounting and reporting of evaporation and
    seepage losses in storage units is now made.

10. Open rectangular channels now have a new parameter that
    specifies if one or both side wall surfaces should be
    ignored when computing a hydraulic radius (to provide
    improved support for quasi-2D modeling of wide channels
    and overland flooding).

11. New Dynamic Wave Analysis options have been added for
    the maximum number of iterations and head tolerance used
    at each time step. The percentage of time steps where
    convergence is not achieved is also now reported.

12. Users can now set the flow tolerances that determine if
    flow routing calculations can be skipped because steady
    state conditions hold.

13. Control rules can now use a conduit's OPEN/CLOSED status
    in both premise conditions and action clauses.

14. The meaning of the link view variable "Capacity" has been
    changed. For conduits it is now the fraction of the full
    cross section area filled by the flow, while it is the
    control setting for all other types of links (the meaning
    of the control setting varies by link type -- see the Help
    file or the Users Manual).

15. The link Froude number view variable has been replaced with
    the link's flow volume, the subcatchment Losses variable has
    been replaced by two new variables - Evaporation and
    Infiltration, and upper groundwater zone Soil Moisture has
    been added as a new view variable.

16. The Node Inflows Summary table of the Status Report now
    includes a new column that lists the mass balance error
    in volume units for each node.

17. A new summary table, Link Pollutant Load, has been added
    that displays the total mass load of each pollutant that
    flows through each link.

Improvements:
=============
18. Using a Drain Delay time of 0 for Rain Barrel LIDs now means
    that the barrel is allowed to drain continuously, even as it
    is filling during wet weather periods.

19. The requirement that an impervious surface must be dry
    (have no more than 0.05 inches of standing water) before
    it could be subjected to street sweeping has been dropped.

20. After runoff ceases and a land surface goes dry due to
    evaporation, any remaining mass of pollutant originating
    from direct deposition or upstream runon is assumed to be
    unavailabe for future washoff (it shows up as Remaining
    Buildup in the mass balance report).

21. The way that wet weather washoff inflow loads are
    interpolated across a flow routing time step was modified
    to produce a better match between the reported total runoff
    load and total quality routing inflow load.

22. The method used to select a time step for processing RDII
    unit hydrographs was modified to consider the case where
    K (the ratio of rising limb to falling limb duration) is
    below 1.0.

23. When the moisture content of the upper groundwater zone
    reaches saturation, the depth of the lower saturated zone
    is now set equal to the full aquifer depth (minus a small
    tolerance).

24. Conduits with negative slopes whose absolute value is
    below the Minimum Slope option will have their slope
    changed to the positive minimum value, thus allowing
    them to be analyzed using the Steady Flow and Kinematic
    Wave routing options.

25. The Avg. Froude Number and Avg. Flow Change columns in the
    Flow Classification Summary table have been replaced with the
    fraction of time steps that flow is limited to normal flow
    and the fraction of time steps that flow is inlet controlled
    (for culverts).

26. An error condition now occurs if a pump's startup depth
    is less than its shutoff depth.

27. Only the upstream node for orifice and weir links is now
    checked to see if its maximum depth needs to be increased
    to meet the top elevation of the orifice or weir opening.

28. Weirs are no longer allowed to operate as an orifice when
    they surcharge. Instead any excess flow will flood the
    upstream node.

29. A warning message is now written to the Status Report if
    the crest elevation of a regulator link is below its
    downstream node's invert.

30. When a reporting time falls in between a computational time
    step during which a pump's on/off status changes, the reported
    pump flow is the value at either the start or end of the time
    step depending on which is closer to the reporting time (i.e.,
    no interpolation is used).

31. Control rule conditions can now accept elapsed time or
    time of day values as decimal hours in addition to hours:
    minutes:seconds.

32. The test for a control rule condition equaling a specified
    elapsed time or time of day was modified to more accurately
    capture its occurrence.

33. If the Water Quality analysis option is disabled then the
    binary results file no longer contains any pollutant values
    (of 0) for all time periods.

34. Hot Start files now contain the complete state of the watershed
    and conveyance system, so that future simulations can start up
    correctly where they left off.

35. The following changes to error reporting were made:
    - Error 319 was re-numbered to 320 and a new Error 319
      was added for a rainfall data file with unknown format.
    - Format errors in external time series files are now
      listed as Error 363 (invalid data) instead of Error
      173 (time series out of sequence).

36. Warning messages written to the Status Report are now
    single spaced instead of double spaced. See report.c.

37. The Link Summary table in the Status Report now lists conduits
    with negative slopes in their original orientation instead of
    in their reversed state.

Bug Fixes:
==========
38. A refactoring bug from 5.0.022 that prevented snowmelt
    from infiltrating has been fixed.

39. Snowmelt rate during rainfall conditions and the updating
    of the antecedent temperature index were were not being
    converted from the six hour time interval used in Anderson's
    original NWS snowmelt model to the hourly basis used in SWMM.

40. A refactoring bug that failed to set the maximum number of
    characters high enough for a line read from a user-prepared
    rainfall data file has been fixed.

41. The optional Maximum Volume parameter for Horton
    infiltration was not allowing any recovery of infiltration
    capacity between storm events.

42. Evaporation from the lower groundwater zone was being
    computed from the rate remaining after surface and upper
    zone evaporation was considered instead of from the
    unadjusted rate (with a reduction afterwards if it exceeds
    the remaining available rate).

43. An error in applying the Vegetation Volume Fraction parameter
    to swales was corrected.

44. The time from the last rainfall used to determine when a
    Rain Barrel should begin to empty wasn't being computed
    correctly.

45. An erroneous error message for Rain Barrel LIDs with a
    zero Void Ratio has been fixed (the Void Ratio parameter
    should be ignored for Rain Barrels).

46. The display of extraneous infiltration results in detailed
    reports for Rain Barrel LIDs has been eliminated.

47. The check on no street sweeping for a subcatchment during
    wet periods was checking rainfall over the entire study
    area instead of just the subcatchment.

48. An erroneous warning message regarding negative offsets for
    pumps when elevation offsets are used has been eliminated.

49. A possible divide by zero error for trapezoidal channels
    with zero bottom width has been eliminated.

50. A program crash that occurred when the Ignore Routing
    option was selected and results were to be saved to a
    Routing Interface file has been fixed.

51. Projects that had no subcatchments or had the Ignore
    Runoff switch selected were not able to evaporate water
    from storage units.

52. Weekday and weekend hourly time patterns for Dry Weather
    inflows are now correctly applied in a mutually exclusive
    manner.

53. The Node Flooding Summary table in the Status Report now
    correctly lists the peak depth of ponded water above the
    node's maximum depth (i.e., its rim or ground elevation)
    instead of above its invert elevation.

54. Occasional problems caused by the date/time functions not
    returning an hour between 0 and 23 (for hourly time patterns)
    and being off by 1 second (when writing results to outflow
    interface files) have been fixed.

55. A bug introduced in release 5.0.017 that caused the
    concentration after first-order decay in a storage node to
    be ignored has been fixed.

56. A bug in the Total Elapsed Time listed at the end of the
    Status Report for runs taking longer than 24 hours of
    computer time was fixed.

57. A correction was made for the slope correction factor used
    for mitered culvert inlets.

58. The procedure for finding the surface area of a storage unit
    given its volume was corrected for the case where the
    storage curve has a section of decreasing area with depth.

59. The procedure for finding a cross-section area given a
    section factor value was corrected for the case where the
    section factor table does not have its highest value as
    the last entry in the table.

60. An error in computing the hydraulic radius of the Rectangular-
    Triangular conduit shape as a function of flow depth was
    corrected.

GUI Updates

1.  The entire GUI code was ported from Delphi 7 into Delphi XE2.

2.  Different color themes for the user interface can be
    selected from the Program Preferences dialog.

3.  The "Data" Browser panel is now named as the "Project"
    Browser.

4.  The Object Toolbar has been eliminated. Visual objects
    are now added to the map in the same manner as non-visual
    objects -- by selecting their category from the Project
    Browser and then clicking the Browser's "+" button (or
    by selecting Project | Add... on the main menu).

5.  The LID Control and LID Usage editors were re-designed to
    accomodate the new LID control options.

6.  Modifications were made to accept the new engine features
    mentioned above (modified Horton infiltration, seepage rate
    parameter for conduits, side wall option for rectangular
    channels, and the additional Dynamic Wave routing options).

7.  Modifications were made to accept the updated set of output
    view variables.

8.  The summary results tables that used to appear as part of the
    Status Report have been moved into a separate Summary Report
    that makes it easier to view and sort them.

9.  The Time Series Plot selection dialog was modified to allow
    more than one kind of object/variable pair to be plotted.

10. The Graph Options dialog was modified to allow a vertical
    axis to be inverted (as when plotting an inverted rainfall
    hyetograph on the same graph as a runoff hydrograph).

11. The option to compute evaporation using the Hargreaves
    equation wasn't being saved along with the rest of a project.

12. If pollutants are defined for a project but the Water Quality
    analysis option is not selected, then after a new analysis is
    made pollutants will no longer be listed as theme variables in
    the Map Browser nor will they be available for graphs, tables
    or statistical reports.

13. The columns for the [XSECTIONS] section of a saved project
    file now includes a heading label for "Culvert Code".
                                                            

Sunday, March 23, 2014

One Second View of a Pump Event in InfoSWMM / SWMM5


"Master the dynamics of pump operations in fluid simulations with a one-second timestep 🔍⏱️:

1️⃣ Activation: The pump engages once the Wet Well reaches the predetermined 'Pump On' depth. 2️⃣ Flow Calculation: Leveraging the pump curve, the system calculates the flow based on the differential head across the pump. 3️⃣ Head Gain Adjustment: Post-activation, the head gain begins to decrease due to the elevated flow in the force main and the rising depth at the downstream node. 4️⃣ Stabilization: Shortly after starting, the pump enters a phase of constant flow, stabilized by the steady head gain across the pump. 5️⃣ Initial Surge: Observe a brief spike in flow at the onset of the pump cycle, a result of the rapid shift in pump head gain.

Unlock the nuances of pump behavior with each simulation second, enhancing the precision of your hydraulic models 💦🔄📊."


One Second View of a Pump Event in InfoSWMM / SWMM5

Sunday, March 9, 2014

SWMM 5 solution for the St Venant Equation and the Node Continuity Equation

I like the way the SWMM 5 solution for the St Venant Equation and the Node Continuity Equation is presented in this paper file:///D:/Downloads/swmm-paper-libre.pdf 
It shows the major components of the SWMM5 solution (gravity, time, inertial, friction and entrance/other and exit losses) and the connection between Storage Area of the Node and the Area of the Node associated with the connecting links.  In my description of the solution here http://www.swmm5.net/2013/07/st-venant-terms-in-swmm-5-and-how-they.html dq1 is Friction, dq2 is gravity, dq3 + dq4 is inertial and dq5 is losses.



Key Dynamic Wave Equations in SWMM 5

Anyone else notice almost all the presentations come back to water? GIS is cool, but Water is cooler! #EsriEPC

The Minimum Surface Area in SWMM 5 - Meaning and Usage

The Minimum Surface Area in SWMM 5 - Meaning and Usage

The minimum surface area in SWMM 5 is intended for manholes that have a gap between the Node Invert Elevation and the Lowest Connecting Link Invert but it also has other uses in simulation.  If there is a gap the minimum surface area is used to prevent a divide by a zero surface area in the node continuity equation.  In the case of very short links where the area of the links added to the node surface area is less than minimum surface area then the area used is the minimum surface area.  If you want the SWMM5 engine to essentially ignore the minimum surface area then set the area to a small value in the Dynamic Wave Tab of the Simulation Options Dialog (Figure 1).   This applies equally to the both Manholes and Storage nodes as shown in Figure 1.  The Surface area for the Storage Node is set equal to the Minimum Surface Area. 

1. Storage Nodes and Manholes use the same Node Continuity Equation until the Highest Link Soffit is reached and then the Manhole uses the Surcharge Equation
2. Storage Nodes and Manholes both use the Minimum Node Surface Area

Figure 1.  The Meaning of the Minimum Surface Area in SWMM 5

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Minimum Drop for a Link in SWMM 5

I wanted to discuss a slightly hidden feature of SWMM 5 that has a definite impact on flat or links with zero slope.  SWMM5 uses an internal unit system based on feet and cfs even though externally you can use SI units.  There is a minimum conduit drop between the upstream and downstream ends of a SWMM 5 link which is 0.001 feet.  This is done so that every link has a non zero slope.  However, depending on the length of the link the drop of 0.001 feet results in drastically different slopes.

Here is a table of the length of link (feet) and the internal slope used in SWMM 5 based on the minimum drop of 0.001 feet.  As you can see a very long link can have a very small slope which has time step issues - you need a smaller time step.

Length Slope
0.1 1.0000000%
0.5 0.2000000%
1 0.1000000%
2 0.0500000%
3 0.0333333%
4 0.0250000%
5 0.0200000%
6 0.0166667%
7 0.0142857%
8 0.0125000%
9 0.0111111%
10 0.0100000%
25 0.0040000%
50 0.0020000%
75 0.0013333%
100 0.0010000%
200 0.0005000%
300 0.0003333%
400 0.0002500%
500 0.0002000%
600 0.0001667%
700 0.0001429%
800 0.0001250%
900 0.0001111%
1000 0.0001000%
2000 0.0000500%
5000 0.0000200%
10000 0.0000100%

Thursday, March 6, 2014

How do you export a time series from SWMM 5?

How do you export a time series from SWMM 5?  One easy way is to graph the runoff or link flow (bullet 1 in Figure 1), use the command Edit/Copy To (bullet 2 in Figure 1), Copy the Data to the Clipboard or File (bullet 3 in Figure 1) and then paste the data to Excel or a TXT file.

Figure 1.  How to Export a Time Series in SWMM5

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Innovyze Debuts Integrated Catchment Modeling Sewer Edition

Innovyze Press Release
 Insider BlogLinkedInTwitterYouTubeYouTube
Innovyze Debuts Integrated Catchment Modeling Sewer Edition
New InfoWorks ICM SE Delivers Higher Levels of Productivity For Sanitary, Storm and Combined Sewer Modeling and Management
Broomfield, Colorado, USA, March 4, 2014 — Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure, today announced the release of InfoWorks ICM SE (Sewer Edition). Since its first release in 2010, InfoWorks ICM has rapidly become the solution of choice for integrated river, sewer and overland flow modeling by utilities, municipalities, local authorities and their consultants around the world. InfoWorks ICM SE incorporates all the powerful analysis features and capabilities of InfoWorks ICM for comprehensive sewer collection systems modeling, but without 2D simulation of surface flooding. In response to the specific requests of our vast wastewater user community, the new program gives wastewater utilities an enhanced set of tools and functionalities and an enriched modeling experience for managing and operating sewer networks. The changes reflect the Innovyze commitment to providing its users significant value and competitive advantages and quickly responding to their needs.
InfoWorks ICM SE is a fully-dynamic sewer network modeling solution that uses a fast, accurate and unconditionally stable implicit numerical solution scheme — providing a high degree of confidence in simulation results. It can be effectively used to model any complex sanitary, storm and combined sewer system, offering complete hydrology, hydraulic and water quality simulation and sophisticated real-time control (RTC) modeling capabilities. (As a specialized version of InfoWorks ICMSE does not model overland flow or 2D flooding.) The software automates many user-intensive operations, helping engineers minimize time spent creating, calibrating and simulating reliable sewer models and analyzing results. InfoWorks CS users will greatly benefit from an improved interface and visualization and reporting tools; additional modeling capabilities (e.g., SWMM5 and CS Horton infiltration, non-prismatic open channels, H2S, Algae, nutrient dynamics); enhanced database and scenario management; multivariable themes and mapping; and stunning graphics. Such advanced capabilities make it easier for users to set up, visualize and manage simulations, and arrive at fast, reliable solutions to support cost-effective drainage design, operation and management.
“We continue to listen to our customers’ wants and needs and devote extensive resources to delivering an extended product portfolio that not only recognizes user feedback but protects their investments,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, NAE, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F.ASCE, President, COO and Chief Technical Officer of Innovyze. “With InfoWorks ICM SE, users of InfoWorks CS can now fully leverage the increased power, flexibility and usability of InfoWorks ICM along with groundbreaking gains in speed, to easily generate optimized solutions as quickly as possible. The release empowers engineers worldwide with new levels of sewer collection system modeling and simulation flexibility.”

Monday, March 3, 2014

TinyURL Code Maker

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

A very handy tool for making those pesky long URL's shorter and easier to see on Twitter and Email.

GitHub code and Markdown (MD) files Leveraging

 To better achieve your goal of leveraging your GitHub code and Markdown (MD) files for your WordPress blog or LinkedIn articles, consider t...