The Adaptive Damping Technique: Improving the Simulation Accuracy of Hydraulic Transients

Abstract

Hydraulic surges are transient events frequently observed in various industrial and laboratory flow situations. Understanding surge physics and its accurate numerical prediction is crucial to the safety of flow systems. The maximum accuracy achievable for transient surge simulations is limited by the inefficiencies in the mathematical models used. In this work, we propose a mathematical model that incorporates an adaptive damping technique for the accurate prediction of hydraulic surges. This model also takes the compressibility effects in the liquid during the surge process into account. The novel approach of using the local pressure fluctuation data from the flow to adjust the unsteady friction for controlling the dissipation is introduced in this paper. The adaptive-dissipation is actualized through a unique 'variable pressure wave damping coefficient' function definition. Numerical simulation of three different valve-induced surge experiments demonstrates the reliability and robustness of the mathematical model. Numerical results from the proposed model show an excellent match with the experimental data by closely reproducing both the frequency and the amplitude of transient pressure oscillations. A comparative study explains the improvement in the simulation accuracy achieved by replacing the constant damping coefficient with the proposed variable coefficient. The superiority of the new model with the adaptive damping capability over the similar models in literature and those used in commercial software packages is also well established through this study.