Mathematical Simulation of Cavitation with Column Separation in Pressurized Pump Pipeline Systems

Abstract

Hydraulic transient analysis is important in design stage as well as the execution stage of pipeline systems for diagnosis of problems arises due to pipe burst, pipe collapses and leakages. The calculations necessary to analyse transient conditions must be very precise, more realistic and less time consuming. To fulfill this objective, a suitable mathematical model incorporating different components that simulates the real physical phenomenon is the need of hour. In this paper, column separation model called Discrete Vapour Cavitation Model (DVCM) is described and applied to a reference problem that consists of pump pipeline system. The calculations of this model are compared with calculations of the reference problem by conventional Method of Characteristics (MOC) approach. The results show that MOC could not able to capture the real physical phenomenon of cavitation with water column separation due to drawbacks in basic modelling.