Passive damping of pressure pulsations in pipelines using Herschel-Quincke tubes

Abstract

The phenomenon of pressure pulsations in pipeline systems caused by centrifugal pumps or reciprocating compressors are known to have detrimental effects on industrial applications. These pulsations can cause fluctuating loads on critical components in the pipeline which can ultimately lead to premature fatigue failure. This paper presents an experimental investigation of the attenuation mechanism of a Herschel-Quincke (HQ) device and its effectiveness in damping pressure pulsations when applied to a resonant piping system. When an HQ device with a length proportional to the wavelength of the targeted pulsation frequency within the main piping system is placed at acoustic pressure anti-nodes, the second acoustic mode of an open-open pipe is formed within the HQ device. This, in turn, transfers acoustic energy from the main pipeline to the HQ device in order to sustain the auxiliary resonant system. Additionally, it forces the acoustic pressure anti-nodes in the main piping system to become acoustic pressure nodes, which disrupts the resonance condition, and an anti-resonant mode is created in the main pipeline system at the targeted pulsation frequency. Additionally, the transmission loss of the HQ device was found to normalize linearly with the diameter ratio of the HQ device. Moreover, the effectiveness of multiple HQ devices on the attenuation of pressure pulsations in pipelines was investigated. For larger main pipe diameters, an HQ device can be divided into several smaller devices while maintaining the same total cross-sectional area and achieving nearly identical values of attenuation. The presence of mean flow and the directionality between the pressure pulsation and the mean flow has a minimal effect for low Mach number (M < 0.1). The results presented in this paper provide some practical considerations for the implementation of HQ devices in industrial pipeline systems under resonant conditions.