Calculating the Pressure Drop Due to Friction in a Piping System - Part 2
There are just six steps to determine the pressure drop in a piping system, Robert Pelikan describes.
1) Make a sketch of the piping system like Figure 1.
2) Determine the peak flow rate.
3) Determine the flow rate through each section of pipe, working from the farthest fixture back to the pump, and note it on your sketch. Also note the diameter, type and length of the pipe in each section.
4) Add the equivalent lengths for the valves and fittings to get the total apparent length of each section.
5) From a pressure drop table like Table 1, find the pressure loss per 100 feet, and calculate the loss for each section of your system.
6) Finally, add up the pressure losses of all of the sections, and you have the total dynamic pressure loss.