Pressure transient in liquid lines

The pressure surge that results from a step change of flow in liquid pipelines, commonly known as water hammer, was analyzed by an eigenfunction method. A differential-integral Pressure wave equation and a linearized velocity equation were derived from the equations of mass and momentum conservation. Waveform distortion due to viscous dissipation and pipe-wall elastic expansion is characterized by a dimensionless transmission number K. The pressure surge condition, which is mathematically singular, was used in the solution procedure. The exact solutions from numerical calculation of the differential-integral equation provide a complete Pressure transient in the pipe. The problems are also calculated With the general-purpose computer code COMMIX, which solves the exact mass conservation equation and Navier-Stokes equations. These solutions were compared with published experimental results, and agreement was good. The effect of turbulence on the pressure transient is discussed in the light of COMMIX calculational results