Water Hammer Protection Characteristics and Hydraulic Performance of a Novel Air Chamber with an Adjustable Central Standpipe in a Pressurized Water Supply System

Abstract

Water scarcity is an urgent issue for social and economic development in arid and semi-arid areas. Constructing long-distance pressurized water supply projects is a commonly used measure to solve water scarcity problems in these areas. With the increasing complexity of long-distance pressurized water supply projects, the issue of water hammer protection has become more and more prominent. Air chambers have been widely used to solve the issue of water hammer accidents. In this paper, we propose a novel air chamber with an adjustable central standpipe, and then analyze the hydraulic performance, as well as the water hammer protection characteristics, of the proposed novel air chamber using numerical simulations. The influences of the inner length, the diameter of the central standpipe, and the diameter of the bottom connecting pipe on the hydraulic performance of the air chamber are also studied. Then, the optimization of the relevant parameters of the central standpipe for the proposed air chamber is conducted. In addition, the volumes of the proposed air chamber and conventional air chambers are compared.