Water Hammer - Software Called AFT Impulse

For one thing, when you have twenty or thirty systems (any of which can be the source), having some form of feedback to at least be able to single out the system which is hammering would be a godsend. To give an example, we have two large power plants with multiple lines which can hammer. One unit was off on outage (taken off earlier in the day) and the other unit was at full load. We heard and felt the hammer and the foreman thought the problem was related to the ties between both units caused from the down unit. When looking for a water hammer, you at times may have to listen for several hammers before determining the general direction of the hammer. I eventually found the hammer on the ground floor of the unit which was on. I had no idea which direction to go until I heard several water hammers. It turns out that a pneumatic (air supply) line had vibrated off of a regulator valve which was a default open butterfly valve. The air line was building up enough pressure to close the butterfly valve and when the pressure got up to a high enough amount, it would pop off of the connector and default open the valve and hammer the line as soon as the valve slammed open. As the pressure bled off, the connector would relax and reconnect loosely to the air fitting and start another cycle of hammering by closing the valve abruptly and then abruptly slam the valve to the open position. It was not a steam line, but a cooling water line. The only way it was found was by having men search to find the pipes that were hammering and then determine the cause. Before the cause was determined, there was at least one tear in the system piping which was patched, but will still need to be fixed permanently during an outage. Had there been software and sensory feedback equipment installed in the systems, operations could have been sent to respond to the problem in a more timely fashion. If finding the source to a questionable water hammer quickly helps you avoid further damage to your systems and avoid having an outage or extended outage to repair the water hammer damage, this type of software can pay for itself rather quickly (provided it works). This is just my opinion of course.