Study of Wall Thickness and Material Effect on Acoustic Wave Propagation in Water-Filled Piping

The operation of many industries, such as power plants or many piping systems, demands knowledge of generated pressure pulsations. The effect of acoustic wave amplification in piping systems can be detrimental to the integrity and life of whole plant. Therefore, understanding of the nature of acoustic wave propagation in water filled piping systems needs to be established based on fundamental experiments and analysis. Chatoorgoon et al. [1] and Rzentkowski et al. [2], compared their no flow experiments with theoretical calculation, and realized that the resonant frequency shifts increased linearly, with resonant frequency increasing. This paper presents an experimental study showing that linear wave theory, based on a transmission matrix method does predict well the acoustic resonance frequency from 50 to 500 Hz. and the resonant frequency shifts were negligible. Study of tube wall thickness, material (stainless steel and Aluminum) and some equal branch configurations for “Closed-end” tubes are discussed.