Computer control simulation of a storm water attenuation system

A computer simulation is developed for the automatic control of the drain mode for an eight million gallon storm water attenuation tank. The objective of the control is to rapidly drain the tank without flooding the system. Mathematical models are developed for all of the system components including hydraulics, automatic valve and feedback level control loop. A computer simulation program was written to solve mass balance equations for three interconnected volumes in the drain path. The simulation provides valuable insight into the loop tuning and control constraints. Field observations indicate that the installation behaves as predicted by simulation.