EXPERIMENTAL IDENTIFICATION OF THE TRANSMITTANCE MATRIX FOR ANY ELEMENT OF THE PULSATING GAS MANIFOLD

Abstract

In positive-displacement compressor manifolds there are pressure pulsations due to their cyclic operation. The analysis of pressure pulsations in the compressor manifolds is important for various reasons: they directly affect the quantity of energy required for medium compression due to dynamic pressure charging, or inversely, dynamic suppression of suction and discharge processes; they cause mechanical vibrations of compressed gas piping network, they cause aerodynamic and mechanical noise; they affect the dynamics of working valves in valve compressors, they intensify the process of heat convection in heat exchangers in the gas network. The Helmholtz model used so far, which is the basis for users, who deal with pressure pulsation damping, contains many simplifying assumptions. This is because; a straight pipe segment substitutes each element of the piping system. In many cases this model is insufficient. An attempt of the analysis of other shapes was presented in references [1–3] but only simple geometry elements were considered. In other papers [4–8] the influence of the mean flow velocity caused problems. In the presented method, on the basis of pressure pulsation measurement results, firstly a division into the forward and backward going wave is determined, then the elements of the scattering (transmittance) matrix are calculated defining the installation element. This allows introducing the correction for gas mean velocity. The results of the method using correction for the gas mean velocity have been compared with the results without correction and Helmholtz model showing better accuracy.