Original Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Three-dimensional computational fluid 0(0) 1–12
! IMechE 2016

dynamics simulation of valve-induced Reprints and permissions:

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water hammer DOI: 10.1177/0954406216631780

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Shuai Yang1,2,3, Dazhuan Wu1,2,3, Zhounian Lai1,2,3 and

Tao Du1,2,3

Abstract
In this study, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulation was adopted to evaluate the valve-induced water
hammer phenomena in a typical tank-pipeline-valve-tank system. Meanwhile, one-dimensional analysis based on method
of characteristics was also used for comparison and reference. As for the computational fluid dynamics model, the water
hammer event was successfully simulated by using the sliding mesh technology and considering water compressibility.
The key factors affecting simulation results were investigated in detail. It is found that the size of time step has an obvious
effect on the attenuation of the wave and there exists a best time step. The obtained simulation results have a good
agreement with the experimental data, which shows an unquestionable advantage over the method of characteristics
calculation in predicting valve-induced water hammer. In addition, the computational fluid dynamics simulation can also
provide a visualization of the pressure and flow evolutions during the transient process.

Keywords
Water hammer, method of characteristics, computational fluid dynamics, user-defined functions, transient analysis

Date received: 28 November 2014; accepted: 17 December 2015

such as Zielke model,7 Vardy and Brown model,8

Introduction
Water hammer, as a transient event in a pipe system,
is often caused by the rapid changes in the hydraulic,
mechanical, or electrical systems.1,2 Water hammer
often produces severe impact force, whose intensity
is related to the increase in kinetic energy. The
responses of flow variations in these operations will
rupture the pipeline and in-line pipe device,3 so it is
essential to accurately predict water hammer events
by numerical methods.4–6
Many researchers have numerically studied the tran-
sient pipe flow using different methods, such as analyt-
ical method, graphic method, finite difference method
and so on. Among them, the method of characteristics
(MOC) is the commonly used approach, and its calcu-
lation belongs to one-dimensional (1D) analysis. In the
transient analysis of the unsteady flow using this
method, the friction factor in MOC model is assumed
to be constant (quasi-steady model5). However, the
quasi-steady approximation underestimates the friction
forces and produces an insufficient amount of damping
as compared to experimental behavior. To cope with
this problem, some researchers add unsteady-flow
terms to the quasi-steady resistance term of 1D
model and developed the unsteady friction models,
Brunone model,9–12 and so on. Furthermore, quasi-
two-dimensional (2D) model13–16 was also proposed
to accurately mode the unsteady-flow phenomena by
considering the velocity profile in the cross section, and
the approach has been used for turbulent flow in a
smooth pipe.17 However, different models are based
on different assumptions, which make the solution
lack uniformity. In addition, the MOC calculation is
unable to realize the visualization of flow.
Recently, with the rapid development of computer,
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is rapidly devel-
oped and widely used. It has been successfully used
for unsteady flow problems inside fluid machinery and
correctly provides the detailed information of flow
field changing.18 For instance, Wu et al.19 predicted
1
Institute of Process Equipment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou,
People’s Republic of China
2
College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China
3
State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems,
Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China
Corresponding author:
Dazhuan Wu, Institute of Process Equipment, Zhejiang University,
38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou 310027, People’s Republic of China.
Email: wudazhuan@zju.edu.cn

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2 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
the characteristics of pump during the discharge valve
rapid opening process, and the simulation results
agree well with the test data, which validated the
CFD method in simulating the transient events. In
fact, the CFD method has been not mature enough
to be applied for simulating water hammer events.
The reason mainly includes two aspects. On the one
hand, the water is always treated as an incompressible
fluid for general CFD models. On the other hand, the
pipeline of water conveyance system is always very
long, so it is unfeasible to simulate the whole system
with a three-dimensional (3D) model considering the
computational resource and time. However, the tran-
sient analysis of hydraulic machinery during the tran-
sition process and the dynamic interaction between the
unsteady flow in pipe and in-line pipe device put for-
ward the urgent demand of accurately simulating
unsteady pipe flow using CFD method. In addition, a
more accurate mathematic model for MOC calculation
can also be developed based on the detail information
and flow visualization. Therefore, it is worth to study
the water hammer events using CFD simulation.
Numerous approaches can cause the water
hammer. In this paper, the rapid closing of a dis-
charge valve is selected to achieve a pressure surge.
A typical tank-pipe-valve-tank system is established
to provide an experimental model. In this paper,
Fluent as a reliable and acceptable CFD software
was employed for numerical simulation. In the
numerical model, the sliding mesh technology was
used and the water compressibility was considered.
The sliding mesh technology can realize the sudden
closure of the ball valve, which can avoid applying
unreal boundary conditions. The results obtained
from CFD simulation were analyzed and compared
with experimental data. Meanwhile the MOC calcu-
lation, based on quasi-steady friction model, was also
performed and gave a comparative analysis.
Experiments
A laboratory apparatus was designed and constructed
to investigate water hammer in pipeline, as shown in
Figure 1. The system is an open loop, which consists of
two tanks with free surfaces at ambient pressure, a
long pipe and a valve. The upper tank is a cylinder
with diameter of 0.425 m. The lower one is a rectangu-
lar tank with dimensions of 0.4  0.4  0.5 m3. A long
stainless steel pipe with 0.032 m internal diameter and
0.002 m wall thickness is used to connect two tanks.
The discharged valve is a stainless steel ball valve,
whose model is DN32. The valve is positioned at the
end of pipeline with a 0.17 m distance from the lower
tank. The upstream total pipe length L is 6.05 m. Four
high frequency dynamic pressure transducers are
located along the pipeline to collect the pressure sig-
nals (P1, P2, P3, and P4), as shown in Figure 2. Among
them, the pressure P4 indicates the pressure stability of
the pipe inlet when the valve-induced water hammer
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Figure 1. Experimental apparatus.
happens. This treatment can help to set the accur-
ate boundary of the analysis model.
The used pressure transmitters were made by
China Baoji transducer Institute. Model CYG1145
of this transmitter was used with an upper range
limit (URL) of 0–600 kPa and accuracy of 0.25% of
the calibrated span. The natural frequency of the
transducer is 80–800 kHz. In this range, the response
of the pressure transducer can accurately reflect the
actual pressure change. The data logger used was the
NI 9205, which is an analog input module for use with
NI Compact DAQ chassis. The instrument features 32
single-ended or 16 differential analog inputs, 16-bit
resolution, and a maximum sampling rate of 250 kS/
s. The pressure signals were acquired and transferred
to an Intel core 2 PC by the data logger at a rate of
one set of readings every 0.001 s.
In the experimental apparatus, the upper tank is con-
nected to a recharge pipe and its pretransient flow rate is
0.25 m3/h. The value of flow rate is so small that multi-
phase flow phenomenon such as cavitation or column
separation will not be generated during the later transi-
ent process, which will simplify the later fluid configur-
ations of numerical models. Adjust the valve opening to
achieve such a steady-state condition that the water level
in upper tank is kept at the highest level and the water
only spilled from the lower tank. In this steady condi-
tion, the rotation angle is 78 and the angle will be 90
when the ball valve is fully closed. Then water hammer
event in the apparatus is initiated by closing the valve
rapidly, and the pressures are recorded at the same time.
The experiment repeats dozens of times to avoid the
influence of accidental factors. Only three runs are
extracted, and the pretransient parameters and results
for the three runs are shown in Table 1 and Figure 3,
respectively. In Table 1, a dimensionless parameter P
was introduced by Ghidaoui et al.5 and defined as:
pffiffi
2D= f U
P¼ ð1Þ
L=a
Yang et al. 3

Figure 2. The system schematic diagram.

Table 1. Pretransient parameters and results for three repetitive experiments.

Discharge Reynolds Valve closure Wave speed, Water hammer Pipe friction
Test Q (m3/h) number time tc (s) a (m/s) period
T (s) factor, f P

1 0.25 2752 0.02 1180 0.021 0.046 676

2 0.26 2816 0.02 1180 0.021 0.046 654
3 0.24 2688 0.02 1180 0.021 0.046 701

where D is inside pipe diameter, L is pipe length, and
U is longitudinal average velocity. Physically, P is the
ratio of the diffusion time scale to the wave time scale
in water hammer problems. This parameter can be
used to evaluate the availability of the quasi-steady
state model.
Numerical model
Traditionally, the method of characteristics (MOC) is
the common used approach in modeling the water
hammer events. However, with the rapid development
of computer, CFD was rapidly developed and widely
used. Therefore, the present numerical analysis,
according to the above experimental model, were
conducted by two relatively independent ‘‘modeling
cultures,’’ 1D MOC calculation and 3D CFD simula-
tion. Numerical results from them were compared.
MOC calculation
MOC calculation was first conducted as reference
analysis. For 1D unsteady pipe flow, the basic control
equations of water hammer, including the continuity
and momentum conservation equations, can be
finally deduced and expressed as two compatibility
equations.20
In the experiment, the rapid closing of the dis-
charge valve was selected to achieve the water
hammer event. The valve closure can be assumed as
a linear process on account of the small rotation angle
(12 ) and the instantaneous process for valve closure.
The transient process of valve closure can be
expressed with the equations of valve opening  over
time.
8
< 0 ð04t40:15Þ
¼ 0  0 ðt  0:15Þ=tc ð0:154t4tc þ 0:15Þ
:
0 ðt 4 tc þ 0:15Þ
ð2Þ
where tc is valve closure time and  0 is the initial valve
opening.
A comparative analysis of measured and calculated
pressure variations is conducted and presented in
Figure 4. The figure shows that MOC calculation exe-
cuted within the quasi-steady approach underesti-
mates the damping and cannot accurately predict the
evolution of the pressure oscillations. Although the
experiment parameter P is larger than 1, which

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4 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
Figure 3. The repeatability of experimental data. (a) P1, (b) P2, (c) P3 and (d) P4.
means the quasi-steady assumption is acceptable, the
calculated deviation can be attributed to the underesti-
mate of unsteady friction. Because the contribution of
unsteady friction effect to the damping rate of pressure
head peak is more obvious for the practical pipe sys-
tems with relatively small timescale ratio (L/D).21 In
addition, the 1D MOC model is unable to realize the
flow visualization during the whole process.
CFD simulation
CFD technology are developed mainly to solve the
governing equations of fluid flow based on highly dis-
cretized finite element models (FEM) or finite volume
models (FVM), which is totally different from the 1D
hydraulic analysis. What’s more, the CFD simulation
can establish more realistic physical model and avoid
different model assumptions. The 3D fundamental
governing equations of fluid flow can be formulated
as follows22:
@
þ r  ðVÞ ¼ 0
@t
DV
 ¼ r   ij  rp þ F
Dt
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in which,  is the fluid density, V is the fluid velocity
vector, p is pressure, qij is the stress tensor, and F is the
external body force.
In this paper, Fluent code is employed for CFD
simulation. It provides various types of turbulence
models23,24 to describe the fluid flow. Moreover, it
offers user-defined functions (UDF) to modify mater-
ial properties and execute valve closing action.
In this study, it is not necessary to establish the
system with a whole CFD model, and only the pipe
and valve were modeled, as shown in Figure 5. The
main reason is that the water surfaces in the upstream
and downstream tanks almost kept unchanged during
the experimental process, so the inlet and outlet pres-
sures of pipe are assumed to be constant (Figure 4-
P4). In addition, the simplified model can save com-
putational resource and speed up simulation speed. In
order to improve the calculation accuracy and effi-
ciency, fully hexahedral meshes are used to discretize
the CFD model. The detail of pipe and valve mesh is
shown in Figure 6.
In the established CFD model, there also needs to
ð3Þ
define the inlet and outlet boundary condition. The
total pressure is set to10 kPa for pipe inlet, and static
pressure is set to 3 kPa for pipe outlet. The operating
ð4Þ
pressure keeps the default value of 101.325 kPa and
Yang et al.
Figure 4. Comparisons between MOC calculated and experimental results. (a) P1, (b) P2, (c) P3 and (d) P4.
Figure 5. CFD numerical model.
gravity is acting downward. In addition, the connec-
tion between the rotary valve and the stationary pipes
is linked by interfaces. Walls of the pipe and valve are
taken solid, so wall boundary condition is defined
to them. Before simulation, four monitoring cross-
sections corresponding to the locations of pressure
transducers were defined.
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5
During the CFD simulation, the valve zone had a
rotating movement and the rest of model was kept
static. The rotation process of ball valve was simu-
lated by using the sliding mesh technology. The slid-
ing mesh is a special case of general dynamic mesh
motion wherein the nodes move rigidly in a given
dynamic mesh zone. In this situation, the nodes of
the mesh move in space (relative to the fixed, global
coordinates), but the cells defined by the nodes do not
deform.25 Furthermore, the adjacent mesh zones can
be linked through one or more nonconformal inter-
faces. As long as the interfaces stay in contact with
one another, fluid can pass from the intersection zone
of the interfaces. The valve closure law, according to
the experimental conditions, is determined by the
transient angular speed, which is specified in UDFs
as follows:
8
< 0 ð04t 5 0:15Þ
!¼ =15tc ð0:154t40:15 þ tc Þ ð5Þ
:
0 ðt 4 0:15 þ tc Þ
in which tc is valve closure time, here tc ¼ 0.02 s.
In the unsteady conditions, very high pressure
surges can occur and compress liquid. Therefore, it
6 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 6. Detail of the pipe and valve mesh.

is necessary to take compressibility into account

during the simulation. The relationship is defined as2 Table 2. Summary of grid number
of different models.
d 
¼ ð6Þ Grid spacing at axial
dp K direction (mm) Cell number

where  is water density (kg/m3), p is absolute pres- 1.5 1966926

sure (Pa) and K represents bulk modulus of water 3.0 987211
(2.18109 Pa). From equation (6), the density is 4.0 754561
described as 7.0 435055
10.0 306839
ref ref
¼
p
¼ pp ð7Þ
1 K 1  K op

in which ref is reference water density under normal

conditions (998.2 kg/m3) and pop is operating pres-
sures (Pa). Here equation (7) is specified in UDF
and executed explicitly at every step.
Among the provided turbulence models in Fluent
code, the used model is the realizable k–" turbulence
model, which is suitable to simulate the pipe flow. The
time dependent term scheme was first order, implicit.
The pressure–velocity coupling was calculated
through the SIMPLE algorithm. The second order
upwind scheme was applied for the spatial discret-
ization of the momentum, turbulent kinetic energy
and turbulent dissipation rate.
Unsteady grid independence study was conducted
by solving the water hammer with different cell num- Figure 7. Pressure time history at section P1 for different cell
bers. Different grid spacing, from 1.5 mm to 10.0 mm, numbers (
t ¼ 0.00035 s).
was used to divide the pipe model in axial direction,
and the obtained numerical models were summarized history curves and the detail wave crest lines, respect-
in Table 2. The temporal interval was fixed as ively. Wave crest line is the line to connect each pres-
0.00035 s. Computational results with different grid sure peak value in the process of pressure changing.
numbers are compared at monitoring cross-section Each pressure curve has a stable waveform and the
P1, as shown in Figures 7 and 9. same water hammer period, and wave crest lines
Before closing the ball valve, a steady CFD simu- have a good match with each other. The flow-rate
lation was first run until reaching convergence, which was also plotted versus the time in seconds, as
serves as an initial state of the later transient process. shown in Figure 9. During the whole process, the
Then the transient simulation of valve rapid closure flow-rate synchronizing with pressure curves repre-
was conducted. Figures 7 and 8 show the pressure sents a slight difference in the initial steady state.

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Yang et al.
It is noted that the valve closing process will started
from a higher flow-rate for the model with more
meshes. However, the observed variation in flow-
rate was under 1% with further increasing the cell
number from 754561. What is more, the pretransient
discharge calculated by the flow-rate (0.086 m/s) is
equal to the measured value. Therefore, the final
mesh, with 987211 cells, defines the whole model. In
a word, all the results demonstrate that the transient
simulation is independent of grid number.
To verify the influence of temporal interval, differ-
ent time steps, from 0.0001 s to 0.001 s, were used to
simulate the transient event. The mesh number was
fixed at 987211. Figure 10 plots wave crest lines cal-
culated using different time steps and compared with
Figure 8. Wave crest lines at section P1.
Figure 9. Velocity time history at section P1 for different cell numbers (
t ¼ 0.00035 s).
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7
experiment results at the location P1. The simulation
results show that the size of time step has hardly any
effect on the surge pressure and the cycle period of
pressure fluctuations, other than strongly driving the
damping of the pressure envelope. Increase the size of
time step can speed up the attenuation trend. In the
plot, the time step of 0.00035 s obviously gives a better
result than other time steps. Based on the changing
trend of simulation results, the most suitable size of
time step will be 0.000325 s.
In order to further demonstrate the influence of
time step, the mesh number was then fixed at
435055 and 1966926. The obtained results were
shown in Figure 11. When the size of time step is
Figure 10. The influence of time steps on wave crest line
(cells ¼ 987211).
8 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Table 3. Parameters of verification models.

Original Model A Model B

Model model (new) (new)

Pipe length, L (m) 6.05 4.0 7.5

Pretransient discharge (m3/h) 0.25 0.72 0.55
Pretransient Reynolds number 2752 7936 6080
Wave period
T (s) 0.021 0.088 0.14
Time step
t (s) 0.000325 0.0012 0.002
Grid spacing
x (mm) 3.5 3.5 3.5
Grid number 987211 674212 1335964

Figure 11. The influence of time steps and cell numbers.

consistent, a good agreement of simulation results is

found for the model with different grid numbers.
However, for models with the same cell numbers,
the size of time step reconfirms the obvious effect on
the damping of the pressure envelope.
Research has shown that transient friction loss can
cause greatly damped behavior. Brunone26 considered
that transient friction is related to the temporal accel-
eration qV/qt and the spatial acceleration qV/qx.
Whether accurately capture the effect of fluid acceler-
ation or deceleration or not will greatly impact the
simulation results. Therefore, for transient flow solu-
tions, it is important to select an appropriate time step Figure 12. Comparisons of wave crest lines for different
size. A too large time step can accurately calculate the models.
spatial accelerations along pipeline, but underestimates
the transient effect of the temporal acceleration because
it may exceed the time scale of the transient flow. equation (8) can provide the relatively suitable size of
Whereas, a too small time step can capture the transi- time step. The corresponding simulation results are
ent flow details and accurately calculate the temporal shown in Figure 12. As for a longer pipeline, it still
acceleration, but underestimates the spatial acceler- needs further research and validation.
ations along pipeline, that will also give rise to rela-
tively conservative results because of the small
Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) numbers.27 A defini-
Results and Discussion
tive time step must be a suitable value, neither too large Calculations were parallely performed on a windows
nor too small. Furthermore, another two experiments PC cluster of eight Intel Xeon processors 2.6 GHz.
were carried out aimed at how to select a suitable size The selected grid cell numbers and time step are
of time step. The new piping systems are the same with 987211 and 0.000325 s, respectively. The transient
previous one except the pipe length. In addition, the simulation ran for 1500 time steps and simulation
pipe was not fixed on the ground, which would have a time is about 10 h. The obtained pressure history
direct impact on the wave speed. The information of curves are shown in Figure 13 and compared with
models was summarized in Table 3. the experiment results.
In the present range of pipe length, it is found that In Figure 13, the CFD numerical results had shown
the size of time step is related to the wave period. a good match with experimental data, such as pres-
The relationship is defined as sure surge, fluctuation period. However, the wave
damping is a little faster than that of measured data

T in the late development. The main reason is that the

t ¼ ð8Þ upstream tank was not modeled in CFD simulation
N
and replaced with a constant head boundary condi-
tions. In fact, the subsistent upstream tank could stor-
in which N is a given parameter chosen from a small age energy through the slight changing of liquid
neighborhood of 70. For different numerical models, surface up and down, which could delay the

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Yang et al. 9

Figure 13. Results comparisons between CFD simulated and experimental results. (a) P1, (b) P2, (c) P3 and (d) P4.

attenuation of pressure wave. As a result, the actual

water hammer wave exists for a long time.
A further comparison of wave crest lines between
CFD simulation, MOC calculation and measured
data were conducted and shown in Figure 14. We
found that the CFD simulation shows the unquestion-
able advantage over the MOC calculation in predict-
ing the water hammer event. Nowadays, it is generally
known that the MOC calculation based on the quasi-
steady friction losses hypothesis is one of the basic
reasons for differences between experimental and
computational results. Unsteady friction models
were then developed to make up for the shortage.
Therefore, the application of CFD simulation will
greatly improve the development of unsteady friction
models. Figure 14. Comparisons of pressure crest lines at section P1.
In addition to accurately predicting the external
characteristics, the CFD simulation also provides a
visualization of the pressure and flow evolution, as (t ¼ 0.15 s). The high pressure moves upstream as a
shown in Figure 15 and Figure 16, respectively. wave, bringing the fluid to rest and then flow back.
Figure 15 shows the pressure wave transmission, Then a low pressure zone is developed since no fluid is
and the color indicates the value of the pressure. available to maintain the flow at the valve. The low-
During the rapid closing process of the down-stream pressure wave travels upstream and reaches the min-
valve, a high pressure zone is generated and reaches imum value when the reverse flow returns to zero
the maximum value at the instant of valve closure (t ¼ 0.1604 s). Then fluid begins to flow downstream

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10
Figure 15. Static pressure evolutions on axial cross-section.
Figure 16. Velocity evolutions of different conditions on axial cross-section.
again and is try return to original condition.
This whole process is repeated periodically under
the action of elasticity of fluid. The action of fluid
friction and wall friction damps out the vibration
and eventually causes the fluid to come permanently
to rest.
Figure 16 shows the evolution of the velocity field
around the valve. The color of the velocity vectors
indicates the relative magnitude of the total velocity.
The velocity vectors on axial cross-section change at
different instants. Before valve closing (t ¼ 0.1302 s),
the velocity vectors are very smooth and concen-
trated. As the valve closed gradually, more compact
vortices are generated in the upstream of the valve. At
the instant of valve closure (t ¼ 0.15 s), the high pres-
sure bringing the fluid to rest and the reverse flow is
generated along the pipe wall and the streamline
becomes haywire. The vortex in the valve body devel-
ops and becomes more clear and compact. The fluid
flows backward and no fluid is available to maintain
the flow due to the valve closure at t ¼ 0.1604 s. The
low pressure is developed, and then brings the fluid to
rest. Therefore, the velocity vectors become cluttered.
Then the fluid begins to flow forward and backward,
and the periodic reciprocating motion will last a long
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Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
time. In the whole transition process, the velocity is
gradually weakened and this change can be seen from
the view of color changing.
Conclusion
In water conveyance systems, the research on water
hammer becomes more and more important due to its
destructive effects. In this paper, this transient event is
investigated by means of experimental and numerical
models. The experimental apparatus is a typical tank-
pipeline-valve-tank system, and the water hammer
event was generated by the sudden closure of the
down-stream ball valve. Numerical models were estab-
lished by CFD simulation. Meanwhile 1D MOC
calculation, based on quasi-steady friction model, was
also performed and gave a comparative analysis.
In CFD simulation, the valve-induced water
hammer event was successfully simulated by using
the sliding mesh technology and considering the
water compressibility. It should be mentioned that
the size of time step has an important influence on
the accuracy of the simulation results. A too large
time step can accurately calculate the spatial acceler-
ations along pipeline, but underestimates the transient
Yang et al.
effect of the temporal acceleration because it exceeds
the time scale of the transient flow. Whereas, a too
small time step can capture the transient flow details
and accurately calculate the temporal acceleration,
but overestimates the spatial accelerations along pipe-
line. As a result, increase the size of time step can
speed up the water hammer attenuation, and a defini-
tive time step must be a suitable value, neither too
large nor too small. Furthermore, another equation
was defined and demonstrated to provide the rela-
tively suitable size of time step. After the simulation,
the obtained numerical results have a good agreement
with experimental data. Meanwhile the CFD simula-
tion also provides a visualization of pressure wave
transmission and the flow field evolution.
Although a comparative analysis reveals that CFD
simulation shows an unquestionable advantage over
the MOC calculation in predicting valve-induced
water hammer, the MOC calculation still is the
common used approach. However, the application of
CFD simulation will greatly improve the development
of MOC models. Furthermore, the present simulation
is only available for single-phase fluids. However, the
sudden closure of a valve causes Fuid transients which
may involve local cavity formation and distributed
cavitation (bubble flow). Therefore, the further study
of CFD simulation can take into account the phase
changes, such as cavitation and column separation.
Experimental flow test techniques, like high-speed
photography, can be employed to assess the actual
transient flow fields, which are also effective references
for verifying numerical simulation results.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: This study was performed as part of
National Natural Science Foundation of China (no.
51276213).
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 valve opening
0 valve initial opening
Appendix
qij the stress tensor
Notation  fluid density (kg/m3)
! the angular speed (rad/s)
a wave celerity (m/s)

t time step size (s)
D pipe diameter

T wave period (s)
f Darcy-Weisbach friction factor
rq the heat loss by conduction
F the external body force (N)
( the dissipation term
H total head(m)
K bulk modulus of water (Pa)

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