Hydraulic Ram Animation

Image: Copyright Hans Schou & Michel Guglielmi
Click on the animation to get a Flash animation
Flash4 animation 15 KB - Flash4 source 316 KB
A Hydraulic Ram is water flow driven water pump. It has no rotating parts and is only operated by two valves. The Hydraulic Ram was invented in 1793 by the Montgolfier brothers in France. The illustration here is not the design used today but the principles are the same.

How it works

The Hydraulic Ram pumps with the energy from high velocity water which is suddenly blocked by a valve (the ball). This blocking causes an impulse which presses the water up in a second champer.

Step by step

  1. Look at the ball when it is in the lower position
  2. Water flows in with a high velocity at "water in"
  3. The water flows out at "waste water" but at the same time it pushes the ball up the curve
  4. When the ball hits the top point it blocks the water flow and a short impulse is build up behind the ball
  5. The impulse presses a little amount of water through the one-way-valve at very high pressure
  6. The impulse is very short and as air can be compressed very fast the air champer act as an energy buffer
  7. The one-way-valve closes again
  8. The air pressure pumps the water out at "water out"
  9. The ball was forced up by the water flow but as the flow stopped it rolls back to the lower position
  10. The cycle begins again
The cycle duration is between 1 and 2 seconds.

Links

Feel free to copy and change the animation. It is released under Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.
Copyright © 2000 by Hans Schou
http://www.schou.dk