From the course: Practical Engineering
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Water hammer
- You might know that most liquids are incompressible, or at least barely compressible, which means, no matter how much pressure you apply, their volume doesn't change. This can be really useful, like in hydraulic cylinders, but that lack of springiness can also lead to catastrophic failure of pipe systems. Hey, I'm Grady, and this is Practical Engineering. On today's episode, we're talkin' about hydraulic transience, also known as, water hammer. (lively music) It's easy to forget how heavy water is, since we hardly ever carry more than a few ounces at a time. But if you add up all the water in the pipelines of your city or even just the pipes in your house, it makes up quite a bit of mass, and when all that water is moving through a pipe, it has quite a bit of momentum. If you suddenly stop that movement, for example, by quickly closing a valve, all that momentum has nowhere to go. Since water isn't compressible or springy, it can't soften the blow. You might as well be slamming…
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