SimHydraulics capability modelling water hammer effects in deep water environment

Does SimHydraulics have the capability to model the effect of hydrostatic pressure on a control system? I would like to model the low pressure side of water hammer which can lead to hose collapse in deep water applications. Variations in line ID, result in changes in flow rate and therefore internal fluid pressure (in the hose) as hydraulic functions are being performed allowing hydrostatic pressure to collapse the hose.

Many thanks.

Answer 1

[Sebastian Castro]

You can model the Water Hammer effect by ensuring there are Fluid Inertia blocks in your model. The simplest way to do this is with the Segmented Pipeline or Segmented Pipeline LP blocks, which can be configured to create a finite-element pipeline model with several inertia elements.

The "LP" means low-pressure, which in turn means that you can also account for pipeline elevation in this block. I'm guessing that for deep-water applications the elevation changes would be non-negligible, so that may be your best bet.

There are also a few examples that show exactly this water hammer effect.

1. Segmented Pipeline Test Rig -- uses SimHydraulics, so no fluid temperature changes
2. Water Hammer effect -- uses the Simscape Thermal Liquid domain, so there are fluid temperature changes

- Sebastian