Modern lifting pump

Only the input is driven; every other part of this model moves by physics (MuJoCo), and its ratios are measured. Run it live, change its parameters, or switch the friction off to see the output stop.

Modelled as

Seen from the front, as Brown, the pump cut away in half section: a barrel (6 cm bore) closed by a cover with a stuffing-box, a flap hinged at one edge over the suction hole in its bottom, and an outlet leaving the barrel's top on the right and rising to a second flap that opens upward into the rising main. The bucket (piston, with leathers) carries a poppet valve in a cage over the hole through it and is pinned to its rod, which the hand works up and down through the stuffing-box - the only drive. The water is lumped vessels: the barrel under the piston and the water over it (with the passage up to the outlet flap) are chambers the piston sweeps, the suction pipe is the well's water standing about 20 cm below, and the rising main holds its water about 40 cm over the outlet flap. All three valves are real - the poppet on a slide, the flaps on hinges - shut by their weight and moved only by the pressures on their faces.

Measured

On each up-stroke the suction flap opens and water rushes in under the piston while the piston's valve stays shut, and the water over the piston is forced up through the outlet flap into the main against its 40 cm head; on each down-stroke the suction and outlet flaps shut and the piston's valve lifts, passing the water through the piston. About 0.74 kg is drawn up and delivered into the main in 10 s of pumping (stroke 5.6 cm).

Notes

The head of the rising main is a fixed pressure (the pipe is broken off above the outlet chamber, as in Brown); water is not drawn in the barrel, as in Brown. The chamber stiffness allows a little air held in the barrel.

Film (MP4) · Still (PNG) · Spec (YAML) · Model (MJCF)