Volume 12 , Issue 3 , May 2026
Hallkawt Abdullah Saeed 1 ; Rizgar Ahmed Karim Karim 1
1 Department of Water Resources Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Sulaimani, KR,Iraq
This paper evaluates the hydraulic performance of a water distribution system in Majidbag Quarter in Sulaymaniyah City under peak summer conditions. The network was analyzed as having some supply and pressure shortages which had been increased by population and limited sources with limited supply, which was calculated by a model created in ArcGIS and simulated in WaterGEMS. The model calibration was conducted using the Darwin Calibrator tool and the R2 value of 0.994 was obtained between simulated results and field taken pressures. In year 2025, demand conditions in the analyzed version of the existing system showed serious problems: in terms of pressure, 35 of 97 nodes were below the minimum required pressure standard (15 m), and many of the pipes analyzed as the distribution ones had flow velocities in which 37 pipes exceeded 2 m/s and 7 pipes operated below the recommended lower limit of 0.2 m/s. In order to improve these gaps, three scenarios of improvement were simulated. The initial two cases were to increase main pipeline diameter to (300 mm and 350 mm) that resulted in an increase in overall pressure but could not fix velocity issues in the distribution network. The third and most useful condition was a combination of a detailed network zoning strategy, adding an extra transmission main, and applying parallel piping in bottlenecks. This combined strategy was effective in bringing all nodal pressure up to the standard range of (15-60 m) and considerable enhancement of velocity profiles, 118 of 126 distribution pipes were working