Customer
Our client is specialized in water transport and distribution solutions. It manufactures and markets components for connections, taps and flow metering, used in water networks upstream of homes.
Tested product
Polyethylene hose connection or pipe fitting.
Hose connections are plumbing components that connect different elements together, ensuring the sealing.
In this case, the pipe fitting saddle clamp can connect a tap or a drinking water distribution pipe.
Objective
Our customer wishes to test the resistance to internal hydraulic pressure of its products. This test bench must test the mechanical fatigue and tightness of hoses elements subjected to sudden pressure variations.
Problematic issues
This type of test often requires a great hydraulic power and energy. This test bench can reach very high or low pressure without wasting energy.
Rapid pressure changes in large components require very high hydraulic power. Our first challenge is to design an energy-saving system by recovering the elastic energy of the product under test.
In addition, the system must be capable of ensuring high accuracy of high- and low-pressure levels, regardless of the dimensional variations of the product under test.
Solution and result
Conventional systems such as pump + solenoid valve do not allow energy recovery.
Motorised plungers require much too much instantaneous power.
The study carried out by our engineers showed that a variable displacement pump was the ideal solution for:
- Controlling pressure increases and decreases regardless of the pressure or volume of water.
- Recovering energy and thus reducing power consumption
The bench is designed to carry out cyclic pressure tests in water, on one or more products simultaneously. It simulates water hammer in pipes or tests the ageing of components.
The proposed principle allows:
- a good control of the pressure rises and fall ramps, whatever the variation of the volume and the high- and low-pressure thresholds.
- recovery of the expansion energy which allows a considerable reduction in the installed power (up to 90% in some cases)
- pressure-controlled cycles up to a frequency of 1Hz
