Investigation on flow pattern in a hydraulic ram pump at various design and setting of its waste valve

Abstract

A hydraulic ram pumps are simple structures, consisting of two moving parts, the waste valve and the press valve. The waste valve mainly affects the magnitude of the impulse force generated. However, interaction of all elements of hydraulic ram pump system influence each other makes its operation becomes complex. Moreover, a detailed description of this hydraulic ram pump has not been well understood. In order to get the hydraulic ram pump designs, it needs to recognize comprehensively the water flow phenomenon that take place in the hydraulic ram pump working cycles. Therefore, visualization of the water flow characteristic in the hydraulic ram pump is done by constructing a hydraulic ram pump model using a transparent material that is acrylic. The characteristics of the waste valve are affected by parameters such as the orifice diameter of the valve, the diameter of the valve disk, the step length, and the valve weight and the discharge and water head of the hydraulic ram pump drive. Besides all these parameters affect each other. Therefore, in this experiment, experimental testing was conducted in the laboratory on hydraulic ram pump waste valve model to investigate the effect of waste valve orifice and disk diameter on hydraulic ram pump. The results showed that the diameter of orifice and disk of the waste valve have significantly influencing the flow pattern in the hydraulic ram pump body and its time movement each stage of the cycle. The greater the diameter of the orifice and the disk of the waste valve the velocity of water that has vortex more and more, so the speed of water flow in the body of the pump also decreases. Furthermore, the larger the diameter of the waste valve disk the shorter the interval of the hydraulic ram pump valve movements, so the frequency of the hydraulic ram pump valve movement increases.