APPENDIX B – MOC and its Struggles to Compete with WPM
Surge Analysis and the Wave Plan Method
Supplementary Material: Example Problems and Solutions
Appendix B – Problem 16
B.16 The Courant stability condition necessitates that MOC methods divide long pipelines into short sections of Δx each such that the Courant number (c Δx/Δt, where Δt is computational time step, and c is celerity) is less than 1 and as close to 1 as possible. This condition may be interpreted as:
i. The pipe should be divided in a such a way that a pressure wave at the beginning of the short pipe section would take at least one computational time step to reach the other end of the short pipe section.
ii. The pipe should be divided in a such a way that a pressure wave at the beginning of the short pipe section would take no more than one computational time step to reach the other end of the short pipe section.
iii. It is an arbitrary condition, and no physical interpretation is possible
iv. It is applicable only for the MOC methods proposed in 1960s and has no relevance to the current MOC methods.
v. Pressure waves travel at the speed of sound in the combined pipe-liquid medium.
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