Application of Unsteady Fluid Flow Simulation in the Process of Regulating an Industrial Hydraulic Network

Abstract

In this article, an analytical solution to a hydraulic network with a wide range of pipe lengths (up to 10 km) is proposed. The Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method was applied with the aim of creating a regulation model for controlling both the flow rate of water from one of the two sources and the discharge pressure in the system. The system inertia requires an understanding of boundary conditions in the operation of pipeline networks, which must be known in order to regulate the required parameters with only minor deviations. The proposed model was compared to experimental data, while the mean absolute deviations in the individual system branches ranged from 1 to 5.19%. The created regulation model was subsequently tested by applying linear, sine and stochastic changes in the output load, while the ability to control the discharge pressure and the selected water flow rate was analysed. The effect of coefficient ε, which multiplies the effect of the difference between the measured and the predicted value of the discharge pressure on the boundary conditions of the discharge pressure in the system, was analysed in this paper. With the use of the proposed unsteady simulation of the fluid flow in the hydraulic system arranged in parallel and in series, the maximum deviation of the regulated pressure was 1.2% and the maximum deviation of the regulated flow rate was 5.3%.