Modelling vaporous and gaseous cavitation in transmission lines

Abstract

A comprehensive study on modelling vaporous and gaseous cavitation in transmission lines will be presented in this study. The purpose of this study is to develop a model to predict the effects of cavitation.

In order to develop the model, two governing equations were derived. Subsequently, the method of characteristics was used to transform the partial differential equations into four ordinary differential equations. Afterwhich, by using integration, the finite difference equations were used to compute a computer program to solve the fluid transient problems numerically.

With the use of the computer program, the results obtained from the proposed model were validated by making comparisons to the numerical results from the column separation model and the experiment conducted by Sanada et al.

The proposed model was able to overcome the deficiencies faced by the column separation model and predict the onset and degree of cavitation more accurately. The characteristics predicted show close correspondence with the experimental data.

Lastly, the concept of theory and method used to solve the model has also been presented in this report.