The transition to 4th generation district heating creates a growing need for scalable, automated design tools that accurately capture the spatial and temporal details of heating network operation. This paper presents an automated design approach for the optimal design of district heating networks that combines scalable density-based topology optimization with a multi-period approach. In this way, temporal variations in demand, supply, and heat losses can be taken into account while optimizing the network design based on a nonlinear physics model. The transition of the automated design approach from worst-case to multi-period shows a design progression from separate branched networks to a single integrated meshed network topology connecting all producers. These integrated topologies emerge without imposing such structures a priori. They increase network connectivity, and allow for more flexible shifting of heat loads between different producers and heat consumers, resulting in more cost-effective use of heat. In a case study, this integrated design resulted in an increase in waste heat share of 42.8 % and a subsequent reduction in project cost of 17.9 %. We show how producer unavailability can be accounted for in the automated design at the cost of a 3.1 % increase in the cost of backup capacity. The resulting optimized network designs of this approach connect multiple low temperature heat sources in a single integrated network achieving high waste heat utilization and redundancy, highlighting the applicability of the approach to next-generation district heating networks.

翻译：向第四代区域供热系统的转型催生了对可扩展、自动化设计工具的日益增长需求，此类工具需准确捕捉供热管网运行的空间与时间细节。本文提出一种自动设计方法，用于区域供热管网的最优设计，该方法将基于可扩展密度的拓扑优化与多时段方法相结合。由此，可在基于非线性物理模型优化管网设计的同时，考虑需求、供应及热损失的时间变化。从最不利工况到多时段的自动设计方法演进，展示了设计从独立分支管网向连接所有热源的一体化集成环状网拓扑的转变。这些集成拓扑无需预先设定结构即可自然形成，它们增强了管网连通性，并允许在不同热源与热用户之间更灵活地调配热负荷，从而实现更具成本效益的热能利用。在某案例研究中，该集成设计使废热占比提升42.8%，项目成本降低17.9%。我们展示了如何在自动设计中考虑热源不可用情况，代价为备用容量成本增加3.1%。该方法得出的优化管网设计将多种低温热源连接至单一集成网络中，实现了高废热利用率与冗余性，凸显了该方法对下一代区域供热系统的适用性。