NEW METHOD FOR NUMERICAL PREDICTION OF WATER HAMMER WITH COLUMN SEPARATION - COMPARISON WITH EXPERIMENT AND THE RELAP5 PROGRAM

摘要

Liquid column separation accompanying water hammer (hydraulic transients) was a subject of numerous research works conducted in many scientific centres of the world. So far, there are not any satisfactory results of using computational methods to simulate this phenomenon. The authors of this paper have developed a new method for calculating pressure fluctuations in pipelines during hydraulic transients with liquid column separation. This method is based on the innovative (original) discrete-vapour-cavity model. In the paper there are two steps presented in the validation process of the new model. The first step is the comparison with experimental data and the second one is the comparison with results obtained using the commercial computer program Relap5. The comparisons of calculated by means of the considered numerical methods and measured pressure surges show significant differences. The reasons for the discrepancies are discussed and conclusions are presented.