A Laboratory Investigation on the Effects of Intermittent Water Supply in a Branched System

This paper investigates the effects of an intermittent supply in a large branched set-up. The general behavior of the filling phenomena is exemplified with reference to a typical test. Then, the effects on pressures measured during transients of valves with different diameters at the downstream end of the branches are systematically investigated. The dependence of the largest overpressure on the system characteristics and downstream conditions is explored. The results of the shown tests and their analysis allow some interesting insight into the possible behavior of functioning systems during intermittent supply. For example, results confirm that a critical dimension of the downstream openings can increase the impacts of the water front propagation during the filling, while the topological complexity of the systems can mitigate them. The relevance of the results for the numerical model benchmarking is also discussed.