Water hammer control analysis of an intelligent surge tank with spring self-adaptive auxiliary control system

Abstract

The water hammer can cause great risks in water supply pipe systems. A surge tank is a kind of general water hammer control device. In order to improve the behavior of the surge tank, a self-adaptive auxiliary control (SAC) system was proposed in this paper. The system can optimize the response of the surge tank according to the transient pressure. The numerical model and the matched boundary conditions were established to simulate the improved surge tank and optimize the SAC system. Then, various transient responses were simulated by the proposed model with different parameters set. The proposed system is validated by comparing the water hammer process in a river-pipe-valve (RLV) system with and without SAC. The results show that the SAC can greatly improve the water hammer control of the pipeline and the water level oscillation of the surge tank. With the SAC system, the required vertical size of the surge tank can be significantly reduced with the desired water hammer control function.