The demand for our AFT Impulse waterhammer modeling software and associated training seminars has been growing steeply in recent years. I frequently travel internationally to teach seminars on waterhammer. When I do I make it a point to find out what the engineer’s local language calls waterhammer.
For those who are not familiar with waterhammer, it is a transient phenomenon that occurs in liquid pipe systems when some event causes a departure from steady-state flow.
The English language term waterhammer is a bit confusing. As it has the word “water” in it, it implies a process involving water. But the English term has historically been applied by engineers to all liquid pipe systems regardless if the liquid is water or something other than water.
Some non-English languages have just directly translated the English word waterhammer – or have come up with the same words coincidentally. Two such languages are Chinese and Thai.
The Chinese word for waterhammer is “shuǐ jī”, meaning literally water hammer.
The Thai word for waterhammer is “kăn nám”, meaning literally hammer water.
The European languages are different. The Spanish word for waterhammer is “golpe de ariete” The French word is “coup de bélier”. Both mean the same thing. In English they mean “battering ram” – the ancient devise used to attack castle gates.
Please send the word for waterhammer in your local language and its English translation. We will gather these and publish them at in the next issue of the AFT Pipeline!
AFT President & Founder | ASME Fellow - Trey founded AFT in 1993. He was the original developer of AFT Fathom (including the GSC and XTS modules), AFT Arrow and AFT Impulse. He was active in software development until 2011 and still works with the development team in addition to managing AFT. He has taught hundreds of training classes on AFT’s software products in twelve countries across every populated continent. He worked previously for General Dynamics in cryogenic rocket design and Babcock & Wilcox in steam/water equipment design. He holds a BSME (1985) and MSME (1986), both from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a registered Professional Engineer.