This master's thesis deals with water hammer events in a hydraulic pipe system with an entrapped air pocket. We examined how the system's characteristics affect the attenuation and shape of pressure waves. The air pocket impacts pressure waveform the most. For this reason, we developed a one-dimensional numerical model, based on the method of characteristics, that predicts transient pressures during the filling of a pipeline with an entrapped air pocket. We found that the use of steady wall friction does not describe the physical process sufficiently. Consequently, the numerical model was equipped with unsteady wall friction calculation. A parametric study was used to specify the effect of initial air pocket length on transient pressures. For the cases presented in this work, the maximum pressure during pipeline filling occurs when the initial length of the air pocket is between 1 % and 5% of the total pipe length.
|