Progress in Analytical Modeling of Water Hammer

In this paper analytical formulas of water hammer known from the literature are simplified to the shortest possible mathematical form based on dimensionless parameters: dimensionless time, water hammer number, etc. Novel formulas are determined, for example for the flow velocity and wall shear stress in the Muto and Takahashi solution. A complete solution in the Laplace domain is presented and the problem of its inverse transformation is discussed. A series of comparative studies of analytical solutions with numerical solutions and the results of experimental research were carried out. The compared analytical solutions, taking into account the frequency-dependent nature of the hydraulic resistances, show very good agreement with the experimental results in a wide range of water hammer numbers, in particular when Wh ≤ 0.1. On the other hand, it turned out that the analytical model based on the quasi-steady friction in great detail simulates dynamic pressure response in systems characterized by a high value of the water hammer number Wh ≥ 0.5.