Author(s): Zhong Tian
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Energy dissipater; Hydraulic experiment; Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
Abstract: To increase minimum pressure in plug dissipater and reduce the risk of cavitation occurrence, the author developed a stepped plug energy dissipater that was composed of an auxiliary plug and a main plug. Hydraulic experiment and CFD simulation were conducted with both single plug dissipater and stepped plug dissipater to determine their head loss coefficients and minimum pressure coefficients. The experimental results show that, for the stepped plug dissipater, comparing with the single plug dissipater, the minimum pressure in the plug increase distinctively although the energy dissipation rate decreases more or less. The ratio of auxiliary plug diameter to main plug diameter equals to 1. 1 and the ratio of auxiliary plug length to pipe’s diameter equals to 0. 4 may be a good choice for the stepped plug dissipater design. The CFD simulation show that the reason why the stepped plug can increase the minimum pressure is that the auxiliary plug lessens the intensity of votex near the inlet of the main plug. As far as hydraulic characteristics are concerned, the stepped plug dissipater is better than single plug dissipater.
Year: 2005