Investigation of the effects of pipe wall roughness and pipe diameter on the decompression wave speed in natural gas pipelines

The shock tube experimental results have shown clearly that the decompression wave was slowed down in a pipe with a rough inner surface relative to that in a smooth pipe under comparable conditions. In the present paper a one-dimensional dynamic simulation model, named EPDECOM, was developed to investigate the effects of pipe wall roughness and pipe diameter on the decompression wave speed. Comparison with experimental results showed that the inclusion of frictional effects led to a better prediction than that of the widely used model implemented in GASDECOM. EPDECOM simulation results showed that the effect of roughness on the decompression wave speed is significant for pipe diameters less than 250 mm. However the decompression wave speed is nearly independent of the roughness for diameters above 250 mm as the frictional effect becomes negligible at such diameters.