Water Hammer

Overview

ater and most fluids are comparatively incompressible and heavy. When they flow down a pipe, depending on
the diameter and length, there is a weight of fluid in motion. If a valve at the end of the pipe is suddenly closed,
the momentum of the fluid is changed and this will give rise to forces on the valve and within the pipe. This is called
Water Hammer and can, depending upon the magnitude of the force, be very damaging.
For this reason large pipe-lines cannot be suddenly shut off and closure takes place over a considerable period of
time. The problem also occurs on small bore pipes but here the effect is usually a knocking noise. However worse can
happen and in the experience of the author water hammer forced apart a two inch compression coupling in a
laboratory and a few thousand gallons of water cascaded down over an electron microscope.
The analysis of sudden valve closure and water hammer can either be done assuming that water is completely
incompressible and the pipe totally rigid or by assuming that there will be some compression of the water and some
expansion of the pipe taken into consideration
******
A good example for this is an abrupt closure of a discharge butterfly valve,. This valve regulates the condensate water
flow of about 14.0 TPH discharge to a large riser pipe. This pipe is 1200 mm. in diameter and of FRP made. The event
was so great that the water hammering action did caused to simultaneously trip several cooling fan motors activating
its vibration protection. For the FPR pipe, it was able to withstand such great transverse force considering the
layout arrangements of the pipe connect slip-on provision (a modified bell & spigot). The NDT inspection that
followed, i.e., visual/dimensional, UT leak detection and thermal scanning have all made known no cracks along the
entire pipe run.
Centrifugal Pump, Net Positive Suction Head