The joint pipe size-material optimization method of water distribution systems is developed in this paper. In contrast to the existing methods taking solely pipe diameters as decision variables, the proposed method is able to generate pipe diameter-material selection plan in a single run. The method is implemented by adding another layer of abstraction into the data structure of the chromosomes. The algorithm adjusts the name strings of the pipe products, enquiries diameter and roughness information from Pipe Candidate Table (PCT), and simulates the hydraulics to evaluate solutions. Special pipe-selection requirements can also be issued by editing entries in the Design Requirement Table (DRT). The method is applied to a real world study case and reduces the capital investment significantly.
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