Hydraulic analysis of water distribution networks is an important problem in civil engineering. A widely used approach in steadystate analysis of water distribution networks is the global gradient algorithm (GGA). However, when the GGA is applied to solve these networks, zero flows cause a computation failure. On the other hand, there are different mathematical formulations for hydraulic analysis under pressure-driven demand and leakage simulation. This paper introduces an optimization model for the hydraulic analysis of water distribution networks using a metaheuristicmethod called shuffled complex evolution (SCE) algorithm. In this method, applying if-then rules in the optimization model is a simple way in handling pressure-driven demand and leakage simulation, and there is no need for an initial solution vector whichmust be chosen carefully inmany other procedures if numerical convergence is to be achieved. The overall results indicate that the proposed method has the capability of handling various pipe networks problems without changing inmodel or mathematical formulation. Application of SCE in optimizationmodel can lead to accurate solutions in pipes with zero flows. Finally, it can be concluded that the proposed method is a suitable alternative optimizer challenging other methods especially in terms of accuracy.

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