Water hammer in pressurized polyethylene pipes: conceptual model and experimental analysis

This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of pipe wall viscoelasticity on hydraulic transients. These effects have been observed in transient data collected from two polyethylene (PE) pipe systems. The first is a 270 m pipeline, 50 mm diameter, at Imperial College London, and the second is the world's longest experimental PE pipeline, 1.3 km long, 110 mm diameter, buried underground at Thames Water Utilities (London, UK). A mathematical model has been developed to calculate hydraulic transients in polyethylene pipe systems based on the assumption that the viscoelastic behaviour of pipe walls is linear. An additional term has been added to the continuity equation to describe the retarded deformation of the pipe wall and the resulting governing equations are solved by the Method of Characteristics. The numerical results are compared with both the classic elastic solution and with collected transient data. Good agreement between numerical results for the viscoelastic solution and observed data was obtained by fitting the creep function J(t). Unlike classic water hammer analysis, the developed mathematical model is capable of accurately predicting transient pressures in polyethylene pipes and the circumferential strains in the pipe walls.