  Gas networks are used to transport natural gas, which is an important
resource for both residential and industrial customers throughout the world.
The gas network design problem is generally modelled as a nonconvex
mixed-integer nonlinear integer programming problem (MINLP). The challenges of
solving the resulting MINLP arise due to the nonlinearity and nonconvexity. In
this paper, we propose a framework to study the "design variant" of the problem
in which the variables are the diameter choices of the pipes, the flows, the
potentials, and the states of various network components. We utilize a nested
loop that includes a two-stage procedure that involves a convex reformulation
of the original problem in the inner loop and an efficient enumeration scheme
in the outer loop. We conduct experiments on benchmark networks to validate and
analyze the performance of our framework.
