Optimal Design of Differential Surge Tanks

One way to reduce the effect, of water hammer in hydraulic conduits is to build a proper surge tank. Surge tanks dissipate the mass oscillation and reduce the transmitted pressure into hydraulic conduits. The design of Differential Surge Tanks usually includes the proper determination of diameter of the main tank and the riser, the heights of the main tank and the riser, and the area of orifices such that they guarantee the acceptable hydraulic performance. In this paper, the design of differential surge tanks has been formulated in the form of an optimization problem in which the objective function is to minimize the total cost. Hydraulic conditions that have to be satisfied for a good performance of the system, comprise the constraints of the problem. The optimization problem has been solved using the Barrier method. The outputs are the basic design parameters that make detailed design of surge tank possible. To show the capabilities of the method, the surge tank of Appalachia dam has been designed by the proposed algorithm and compared to similar design of other research.