Accurately Predicting Transient Fluid Forces in Piping Systems Part 1: Fundamentals

Changes in the operation of piping systems — like valve closures or pump starts — propagate pressure waves that travel at acoustic velocity throughout the fluid. These pressure waves have considerable effect on forces, potentially generating dynamic loads upwards of 10,000 lbf (50 kN) in common configurations.

Some estimation methods used in industry for estimating transient forces neglect terms that may be important in some cases. Calculating forces due to these transients without simplification for transient liquid or gas flow is presented here in detail.