Research of a water hydraulic piston pump applied for water mist fire suppression system

Fire is one of the fatal threats in manned spacecraft, water mist fire suppression technology has become one of the most important methods to preventing fires. As the main motive components, high pressure water hydraulic piston pump is very important for the development of water mist fire suppression technology. A novel crankshaft piston pump was studied through simulations and experiments in this paper. Furthermore, an attenuator was designed and utilized to reduce the pressure pulsation for the improvement of the performance of the piston pump. Analysis results show that the pump has many essential advantages, such as little lateral force, low PV value, good friction and wear conditions, as well as high volumetric efficiency. In addition, the performances of the pump were obtained through simulations using AMESim. Simulation results indicated that the piston pump has a good flow rate property. The flow rate is well in agreement with the theoretic design and it reaches to 235L/min. However, the flow pulsation unavoidably occurs, and it further causes pressure pulsation. Generally, the pressure pulsation frequency is the product of the shaft rotation frequency and the piston number. Fortunately, the utilization of attenuator could effectively reduce the pressure pulsation, so that the performance of the piston pump is well improved. The pressure pulsation ratio could be reduced to 1%. The new type crankshaft piston pump with low pressure pulsation is helpful to the development of water hydraulic technology and the water mist fire suppression system.