Modeling Transient Pipe Flow in Plastic Pipes with Modified Discrete Bubble Cavitation Model

Kamil Urbanowicz, Anton Bergant, Apoloniusz Kodura, Michał Kubrak, Agnieszka Malesińska, Paweł Bury and Michał Stosiak
Additional contact information
Kamil Urbanowicz: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, 70-310 Szczecin, Poland
Anton Bergant: Litostroj Power d.o.o., 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Apoloniusz Kodura: Faculty of Building Services, Hydro and Environmental Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-661 Warsaw, Poland
Michał Kubrak: Faculty of Building Services, Hydro and Environmental Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-661 Warsaw, Poland
Agnieszka Malesińska: Faculty of Building Services, Hydro and Environmental Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-661 Warsaw, Poland
Paweł Bury: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Michał Stosiak: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-22

Abstract: Most of today’s water supply systems are based on plastic pipes. They are characterized by the retarded strain (RS) that takes place in the walls of these pipes. The occurrence of RS increases energy losses and leads to a different form of the basic equations describing the transient pipe flow. In this paper, the RS is calculated with the use of convolution integral of the local derivative of pressure and creep function that describes the viscoelastic behavior of the pipe-wall material. The main equations of a discrete bubble cavity model (DBCM) are based on a momentum equation of two-phase vaporous cavitating flow and continuity equations written initially separately for the gas and liquid phase. In transient flows, another important source of pressure damping is skin friction. Accordingly, the wall shear stress model also required necessary modifications. The final partial derivative set of equations was solved with the use of the method of characteristics (MOC), which transforms the original set of partial differential equations (PDE) into a set of ordinary differential equations (ODE). The developed numerical solutions along with the appropriate boundary conditions formed a basis to write a computer program that was used in comparison analysis. The comparisons between computed and measured results showed that the novel modified DBCM predicts pressure and velocity waveforms including cavitation and retarded strain effects with an acceptable accuracy. It was noticed that the influence of unsteady friction on damping of pressure waves was much smaller than the influence of retarded strain.

Keywords: retarded strain; cavitation; water hammer; unsteady friction; method of characteristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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