The first step that Skelebrator performs is Smart Pipe Removal, which is an improved version of the data scrubbing technique. The main drawback of standard data scrubbing procedures is that they have no awareness of the effects that removing elements from the model will have on the calculated hydraulics. This can easily cause network disconnections and lead to a decrease in the accuracy of the simulated network behavior.

Skelebrator eliminates the possibility of inadvertent network disconnections caused by the data scrubbing technique. This is accomplished by utilizing a sophisticated network-walking algorithm. This algorithm marks pipes as safe to be removed if the removal of the pipe so marked would not invalidate, or disconnect, the network. For a pipe to be removed, it must:

• Meet the user-specified removal criteria
• Be marked safe for removal
• Not be marked as non-removable
• Not be connected to a non-removable junction (to prevent orphaning).

This added intelligence protects the model’s integrity by eliminating the possibility of inadvertently introducing catastrophic errors during the model reduction process.

This innovation is not available in other automated skeletonization applications; a likely result of performing skeletonization without this intelligent safety net is the invalidation of the network caused by the removal of elements that are critical to the performance and accuracy of the model. At the very least, verifying that no important elements have been removed during this skeletonization step and re-creating any elements that have been erroneously removed can be a lengthy and error-prone process. These considerations are addressed automatically and transparently by the Skelebrator’s advanced network traversal algorithm.