ABSTRACT
Wylie and Streeter1 provide an excellent treatment of hydraulic transients and their causes. Their book starts with continuity equations. The authors then develop models for dynamic components in compressible and
incompressible liquids using lumped models of capacitance and inertance, the fluid equivalent of inductance. Their equations for oscillatory flow are almost indistinguishable from the electromagnetic equations that are relevant to transmission lines. At the time of publication (1978) Wylie and Streeter did not have a particularly broad range of numerical techniques available, and quoting from some of their earlier work,2 they say “In 1968 it was suggested that transient fluid flow in multi-dimensional space could be simulated by representing the space with a latticework of one-dimensional elements, in each of which the fluid response obeys the one-dimensional transient flow equations. At that time the elasticity of the line elements was not properly accounted for in the model, a fault which resulted in a delay in the response predicted by the numerical model . . ..”
