The mass in the pipe resists flow fluctuation and causes pressure.

The information that you need, or equipment that you wish us to select for you, needs to reflect pipe length.

Pipe line shock or "water-hammer" is caused by the mass in the pipe, its velocity, and valve closure time.

Length of pipe times its cross sectional area times the liquid SG determines the mass. So PIPE LENGTH is vitally important. For other information about water hammers please go to LDi ShockView input data & oscillograph plot.

There are several sources of pressure pulsation.

A. When a pump is trying to displace liquid, any liquid already in the system may be called "acceleration head". How much "head" or pressure is needed depends on the mass to be accelerated, and the time for the acceleration. How long "head" or pressure is needed depends on the mass to be accelerated, and the time for the acceleration. How long the pipe is determines how much mass there is, so pipe length is a vitally important figure.

B. When a process controller is told to increase the size of its opening, or to reduce its opening, it changes system pressure. How much, this valve activity, "modulation" causes pressure change (or "pulsation") also depends on the liquid mass.

C. One of the frequencies generated from A) and B) forms of pulsation, depends on the length of the pipe. For more on systems and frequency response, different pulsations see Liquid-Dynamics.com pulse signatures.

So whether it is shock or pulsation, the pipe length is important.

There are several characteristics of large diameter and long pipe lines. First, one has to recall that ALL LIQUIDS ARE COMPRESSIBLE. Even if it is only 5e 10-6 liters / bar with a little absorbed / entrained air or gas, a mile of pipe will likely be enough cushion to deal with flow fluctuation from a multiplex pump. Conversely, the dissipation of low frequency pressure wave will be minimal because of the large diameter. So as pulsation amplification may occur, the primary requirement is to break the pressure waves. This is an "acoustic" or WaveGuard application. See WaveGuard

Short Pipes are generally found inside facilities and nearly always have multiple direction changes. Therefore, there are multiple frequencies that come from the many nodal lengths. The compressibility of these smaller volumes, is not normally of much help. Such systems tend to be the most pulsatious.

When you can only tell us what is within the confines of the skid, we can not calculate how much pulsation or shock there would be without a dampener. So if you ask for a reduction from an "unknown" magical for anyone to be able to guarantee to you that your chosen final smoothness figure can be matched.

A system response frequency can be lowered by adding dampener softness, so it does not match (resonate with) the chosen frequency. Roughly, 1450/2 divided by pipe length meters = Hz Frequency.