Assessment of Peak Upsurge Height Adopting Simulation Analysis

Abstract

Abstract: Surge tanks are water storage devices provided on the upstream of a pump house. The main purpose of a surge chamber is to protect the pipe line from excessive surge pressures. During the power failure or sudden shut down of pump(s), the flow in the pipe line is diverted into the surge tank. The present study was carried out for Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Scheme (stage-III) to predict the peak upsurge height in the surge chamber. The pressure oscillations in the surge tank for different unsteady flow situations with various pump operating conditionswas analyzed in ANSYS – Fluent software. A user-defined function, by means of macro generated based on the VOF - multiphase analysis was adopted. The peak upsurge height was evaluated analytically for one, two and three-pump shutdown conditions. Further, the study was extended to estimate the peak upsurge height by means of two different widely adopted turbulence models viz., k-Epsilon and k-Omega. The results obtained from the simulation analysis were found to be in good consonance with the analytical results for all the three unsteady flow conditions. Keywords: Pump Shutdown, Time Period, Pressure Oscillations, Peak Upsurge Height, K-ε, K-Ω