Development and Testing of Hydraulic Ram Pump (Hydram): Experiments and Simulations

Abstract

Hydraulic ram pump (hydram) is a rather 'mature' technology as it has been used over the last two centuries with many variations in design and basic configurations have been tried. Pump motor is favoured rather than hydram to transfer the water from one point to another point because of its consistency. However, following the increasing awareness of the adverse impact of global warming and the needs of sustainable technology, interest in hydram for water supply purpose has revived. The purpose of this paper is to study the effectiveness of hydram implementation and the effect of the stroke valve design towards flow rate of water being delivered. There are three methods used in this study; (i) experimental evaluation of hydram; (ii) experimental evaluation of adjustable waste valve; and (iii) computational simulation of adjustable waste valve. The adjustable waste valve was designed, fabricated for experiment and modelled for simulation. The hydram is very good to be installed as a pump at hill because it can supply water more than high of inlet water. The different length of stroke shows different behaviour of water flow and more length of stroke, more flow rate of water at discharge pipe. Hydram has a great potential to be functioning as a simple and reliable pumping device in those hilly remote areas which are of no water supply coverage.