Pump & Piping Hydraulic Data Handbook: Practical Calculations for Specifying, Sizing, and Troubleshooting Fluid Systems

By Michael A Smith

The fluid mechanics textbook on your shelf explains why the Moody diagram takes its shape. The manufacturer's catalog hands you a curve and a set of dimensions. Neither tells you what number to write on the datasheet when a vendor is waiting and the line has to be sized this week. That gap - between the theory and the defensible number the job demands - is where pump and piping systems quietly go wrong.

A viscosity read at the wrong temperature, a minor loss left out of the head calculation, a suction line drawn without checking margin against vapor pressure: each looks correct on paper and produces a system that cavitates, hammers, wastes energy, or never reaches design flow. This handbook is built to close that gap. It is organized not by mathematical topic but by the sequence of decisions a real project forces - establish the fluid's properties, calculate friction and minor losses, size the pipe, build the system head curve, find the pump's true operating point, protect against cavitation, and diagnose what is wrong when a running system misbehaves.

Working through it, you will be able to:

Turn a required flow into a defensible pipe size using economic-velocity ranges and life-cycle cost, not just a rule of thumbCalculate pressure drop through pipe, fittings, and valves by two methods and cross-check one against the otherBuild a system head curve, find where it crosses a pump curve, and apply the affinity laws to a speed change or impeller trimCalculate NPSH available, compare it against NPSH required with a real margin, and recognize cavitation before it destroys an impellerSize control valves, evaluate pipe schedule and pressure rating, and account for thermal expansion and water hammerDiagnose low flow, lost prime, vibration, and gradual performance loss by reading a system's pressure and flow signature

Every governing equation is carried through a full worked example with each step shown. Each chapter includes a Mistake Autopsy - a documented field failure, its root cause, and the rule that prevents it - plus practice problems with complete answer keys. All values appear in both US-customary and SI units, and eight appendices keep pipe schedules, fluid properties, friction-factor charts, and NPSH quick-references at hand.

Across twenty chapters and five parts, the coverage runs from fluid properties, the Reynolds number, and the Moody diagram through major and minor losses, economic pipe sizing, compressible and two-phase flow, system curves, centrifugal pump curves and affinity laws, NPSH and cavitation, series and parallel pumps, positive-displacement pumps, control valves, pipe material and pressure rating, water hammer and surge, and a full troubleshooting and commissioning framework.

It is written for the mechanical, process, chemical, and plant engineers, the piping designers and specification writers, and the maintenance and reliability technicians who size and troubleshoot fluid systems as part of a broader job. A first course in fluid mechanics is assumed; no further specialization is.

Open it to the chapter that matches the problem in front of you, work the example against your own numbers, and reach for a result you can defend to a client, a vendor, or an inspector.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HKK3XHH6
• ISBN13: 9798176081619
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 516 Pages
• Weight: 2.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.5" x 11.0"