Pipes

Pipes

These are conduits for water that are closed, and are usually circular in cross-section. The circular shape provides the greatest area for a given perimeter, and is the most efficient shape for resisting friction. In urban stormwater drainage practice, street drains are usually made from precast concrete and laid in place, although plastics are widely used in property drainage systems.

DRAINS presently allows for single and multiple circular and rectangular pipes. Other cross-sectional shapes can be modelled as irregular open channel sections.  It is possible to locate two dissimilar pipes between two pits, as shown below, or to divide pipe links into segments connecting through nodes. However, pipe flows through several segments will be slightly slower than through a single pipe link.



Following a run, flowrates through a channel and water levels at its ends can be viewed in the Main Window. Options for displaying more detailed results are given in the Pop-Up (right mouse button) menu.

The HGL levels at the ends of a pipe can be seen among the results for the pits or nodes upstream and downstream of the pipe. These appear on the Main Window display and the Long Section view, which provides a pictorial display showing invert and surface levels, and after a run, HGL levels and flowrates.


    • Related Articles

    • Colour-coding

      From mid-2015, DRAINS has adopted the following colours for pits and pipes:

    • Exporting DXF files

      You can create a DXF file containing a plan of pipes and pits from the File menu. In the DXF files produced by DRAINS, pipes are represented by lines and nodes are represented by circles. These can be on different layers if you wish. One text value ...

    • Cover depth

      This is the depth from the surface to the top (of the outer surface) of a pipe. In cases where paving or a pavement is applied to a surface, the cover might apply to the underside of this overlay, rather than the finished surface. Minimum cover ...

    • Design drawings

      These are drawings created to assist the construction of objects or systems, showing the full extent and details of works to be performed. In urban stormwater drainage applications they will commonly involve: a plan view of a system of pits, pipes ...

    • Quantities

      DRAINS calculates the volumes of excavation from the pipe lengths and invert levels, making the following assumptions: The default trench width is as shown below, with 200 mm being added for each parallel pipe in addition to the first one. These ...