Hi! This is my first post, english is my second language, sorry if I have some mistakes.
First of all I'm a 4th year engineering student in El Salvador, theres this subject I course, they gave us a project where you need to simulate water hammering, in case you don't know water hammer is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid (usually a liquid but sometimes also a gas) in motion is forced to stop or change direction suddenly (momentum change). A water hammer commonly occurs when a valve closes suddenly at an end of a pipeline system, and a pressure wave propagates in the pipe.
We are still builting the machine, but the professor requires us to use Arduinos so we can plot the changes of the pressure withing different ranges of time. So my question is, do I have to use a pressure sensor? Does it exist for arduinos? And if it exists, how do I use it? Where do I have to place it? Thanks for your help guys.
Many pressure sensors are available that can be used with Arduino, but I think they would need to be rather fast to record useful data from a water hammer event.
An analog pressure sensor with a voltage output would work, but the standard sampling period for the analog input on the Arduino is about 100 microseconds/sample (10 kHz sample frequency). With some extra work you can increase that sample frequency to 50 kHz or so.
Estimate the sample rate required to make useful measurements and let us know what that is. Also, you need to estimate the maximum pressure expected.
Note: good pressure sensors are not cheap. This one is excellent and will work with well Arduino, but the response time is about 1 millisecond. http://www.omega.com/Pressure/pdf/PX309-5V.pdf
Water hammer is both a good thing, and a bad thing.
used as the driving force for a water pump, it eliminates the need for any external power except gravity and the pump design. the discharge tubing cannot be plastic or rubber. those materials will flex and absorb the pressures and reduce the effect.
I am not sure if I understand the question. you want to create a device that creates water hammer, then monitor the conditions to record the effects ?
although water is generally considered non-compressable, the greatest effect will be closest to the valve, and lesser pressure as you get farther away.
the hydraulic ram could raise water in a pipe to very significant distances. a few meters or more.higher than the water pressure in the line. and that could be a couple meters or more.
I would think that a vertical tube could be used and height of water could be measured to show the effects.
having multiple vertical tubes, each further away from the source could show effects based on distance.
I would advise that if you want to pursue this idea. to check with your professor. this may not be the result he is looking for.