Study on Pressure Transients in Low Pressure Water-Hydraulic Pipelines

Abstract

The pressure transients in low pressure water-hydraulic pipelines are worthy of study in hydraulic systems since the frequency-dependent friction model and initial gas bubble volume have generally unknown parameters and lead to unfavorable pressure peaks. More seriously, the transmission efficiency will be significantly reduced. To predict the accurate pressure transients in the water-hydraulic pipelines, a new method is adopted to identify unknown parameters, such as the weighting function coefficients of friction model and the initial gas bubble volume by using the genetic algorithms (GAs). Based on the errors performance between the experimental data and the simulation results, these global optimal parameters are obtained during the water-hydraulic pipeline pressure transients. In the experiments, the pressure pulsations, cavitation and gas bubbles growth, and collapse in the low pressure water-hydraulic pipeline are recorded by two pressure transducers and a high-speed video camera, respectively. Furthermore, the simulation results with respect to the model parameters optimized by the genetic algorithms are consistent with the corresponding experimental data.