Will longer barrels help?

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Neptune
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Will longer barrels help?

Post by Neptune » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:05 am

I was wondering if adding a few inches of a pentube/casing would help focus the initial shot of water, and help with stream lamination/distance/accuracy. Has anyone tried this before?
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Fishfan » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:14 pm

On some blasters, yes. The HydroCannon is an example. If you stick a piece (approx. 6 inches long) of 1/2 inch CPVC inside the front of the HydroCannon (Take out the screen first), it increases range 10+ feet. I think the HC might be more powerful than the 2500, because on 19x (What isoaker rated the nozzle) it shoots 44ft, the 2500 shoots 40 ft on 20x (I think).

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by the oncoming storm » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:40 pm

As fishfan said on some blasters, it only works on riot blasts other wise the drag from the extra pipe will hurt range
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Drenchenator » Mon Feb 11, 2013 6:05 pm

For the most part, longer barrels wouldn't make much of a difference in performance, but it would waste material and make the gun longer. The barrel itself does nothing except let the water flow for a little longer, which will do almost nothing to improve stream lamination and cohesion.

In some situations, like the one Fishfan described, it can certainly help. In this case, though, I'd believe that the change in the nozzle was more important than the barrel length itself.

A better way to improve stream cohesion and lamination (and most likely range) would be to built a nozzle laminator and buy a conical nozzle. The nozzle laminator reduces turbulence before it reaches the nozzle, and the conical nozzle would concentrate the flow better and prevent unnecessary pressure losses. Together, these ideas should increase range. The nozzle laminator wouldn't be too hard to make, but conical nozzles are hard to come by.
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Fishfan » Mon Feb 11, 2013 6:54 pm

Yes, very hard to find! There are those sweeper nozzles, but they require an adapter to attach them to homemades.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by SSCBen » Mon Feb 11, 2013 9:16 pm

Research into nozzles suggests that barrels would promote stream break-up. Here's a research paper that discusses this. Sorry, it's fairly technical, as is the explanation of why this occurs. But the image below is clear:

Image

The only difference between the four different configurations is the barrel length. The barrel section does change the flow, and it can cause the stream to break up much earlier. And the longer the barrel, the worse the stream break-up (to a point).

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by isoaker » Tue Feb 12, 2013 11:06 am

While longer nozzles resulting in greater loss of lamination makes sense on the one hand, it makes me wonder how much effect/importance the amount of tubing between the pressurized area and the nozzle also contribute to loss of stream lamination (is the effect additive, multiplicative, or worse)? Longer nozzles and longer tubing definitely contribute to slowing water down and increasing turbulence. The irony is that one needs to have some tubing and a good nozzle to guide the flow from a pressurized chamber, but having too much ends up causing turbulence again. Physics is weird. :goofy:

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by marauder » Tue Feb 12, 2013 11:53 am

I was completely thinking the same thing isoaker. The beauty of the CPS 2000 is that it's pressure chamber, nozzle valve, laminator, BAM. The 2500 has a piece of plastic on the end of the laminator, where the nozzle selector attaches. This piece of plastic constricts the flow of water through what is essentially a 20x aperture, causing some turbulence. The Monster X is even worse which is why you get another 5 foot reduction in range.

On the other hand, if a large stream is not laminated it will also be turbulent and won't go as far. The Hydrocannon, Flash Flood, and Arctic Blast are good examples of this. Laminators actually slow down the stream speed, but they also direct it.

I find this dichotomy(?) fascinating. You don't want to slow the stream speed down, but then again, you really do!
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by SSCBen » Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:17 pm

How much the length of pipe before the nozzle orifice influences the flow depends greatly on the flow conditions and is not entirely clear.

Without getting very technical, (steady) flows will "develop" down a length of pipe. Eventually they are "fully-developed" and will follow certain velocity distributions (depending on the flow conditions). The paper I cited above suggests fully-developed laminar flow in the actual orifice/barrel is very bad for stream stability. But this does not apply to the pipe before the nozzle. The flow pattern changes completely in the contraction from the pipe to the nozzle. Turbulence is inherently chaotic (i.e., sensitive to initial/past conditions). So if we are comparing two nozzles, even if the flow has a similar turbulence intensity but one nozzle has a longer segment of pipe before it, the results are not exactly clear. I don't think the effect would be too strong, but I don't know.

If some sort of "laminator" is used then the length of these elements will have an effect on the flow. The effect is not always clear, but there have been many studies into these elements for wind tunnel applications. I have not read these studies in great detail, but I know that researchers have looked into controlling (not just reducing) turbulence via screens and honeycombs/straws and have tested many different configurations. There are downsides too, including pressure loss, velocity reduction, and construction complexity.

Nozzle design is a subject that interests me greatly and I have saved many papers on the subject. I have not had the time to read them in much detail, but when I do I will post a summary of what I learned as an article on SSC.

An aside: I'm not sure what the source of the term "lamination" is (probably was me back in 2004 or so) but it's not a term used in the scientific literature as far as I can tell. And it's pretty vague. There is an alternative term. Turbulence intensity is measurable and its definition is well understood. We want low turbulence intensity. (As an aside within an aside, a lot of what I wrote years ago was vague, incomplete from my lack of understanding, and probably misleading, so I do intend to eventually rewrite a lot of what's on SSC. I hope you all are patient as I do that while finishing grad school over the next several years.)

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Drenchenator » Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:20 pm

Well, I think this certainly will make people pay more attention to their nozzles. They can make or break a water blaster. It also goes to show that some turbulence may be beneficial.

I've always wondered about the term "laminator" myself. It's not really a laminator anyway -- a 5 oz/s stream out of a 3/16 inch nozzle has a Reynolds number of 44000, which is likely turbulent -- so it never really creates laminar flow anyway. The famous Super Soaker nozzle patent refers to itself as a "turbulence control member," which is true but not a catchy phrase. The straws have the better name of "linear stream guidance walls," which do explain their function better. They serve to orient the stream into a single direction more than they made the stream laminar. In the end, "nozzle assembly" may be a more accurate term.
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by the oncoming storm » Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:07 pm

Ben you are relaunching SScenteral ? Good for you, I would focus a lot of effort into an update on the homemades section and make articles for most of the homemade that were of new design (basic or modded APH's don't need new articles) on your forums.
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Fishfan » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:50 am

All this talk confuses me. I just want a soaker that shoots far :goofy:. But I like that Ben is thinking about doing more on SScentral, instead of making simple homemades, there should be articles on advanced homemades that are easier to use in battle than a standard APH. (But I must say a CPH is a lot easier to use than a bulky APH imo, and also easier to make more compact.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:21 am

Hmm, this is making me want to try hot gluing a straw onto the barrel of my Colossus. Hot glue is easy enough to remove that even if it didn't work well it could be returned to normal with just a bit of pulling.

Technically though longer barrels would increase range. If I put a 50ft straw on a Colossus it would be at least equal to a CPS 2000 in range. It would be extremely fragile and have no maneuverability, but it would have great range! :goofy: Though the person couldn't be closer then 50ft for it to work, maybe if I made the straw detachable... :oo:
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Fishfan » Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:58 am

If you measure from the end of the straw, the range is terrible.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:59 pm

Fishfan wrote:If you measure from the end of the straw, the range is terrible.
Oh, so that is how we are doing it. I thought we were measuring from the person pulling the trigger. :goofy:

But in all seriousness I am curious what would happen if I attached a 3-6 inch straw to the barrel of the Colossus.
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by the oncoming storm » Wed Feb 13, 2013 10:20 pm

If it was up to me that is how I would test range, how far you are from your victims matters more than how the gun can shoot
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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by SSCBen » Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:51 pm

Fishfan wrote:But I like that Ben is thinking about doing more on SScentral, instead of making simple homemades, there should be articles on advanced homemades that are easier to use in battle than a standard APH. (But I must say a CPH is a lot easier to use than a bulky APH imo, and also easier to make more compact.
An APH works well for me. What you're asking for is subjective, and to be honest I don't think anyone's made anything ergonomically comparable to manufactured water guns. So if that's what you want, well, wait for someone to make it and then get back to me.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Andrew » Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:08 pm

Ben wrote:An APH works well for me. What you're asking for is subjective, and to be honest I don't think anyone's made anything ergonomically comparable to manufactured water guns. So if that's what you want, well, wait for someone to make it and then get back to me.
To my knowledge, the only notable ergonomic homemade that isn't on the homemade section of SSC (although it is on the SSC forums) is Drenchenator's DR-4. That's probably as close, to stock ergonomics (possibly even better than some stock blasters), as we have currently achieved.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by SSCBen » Sun Feb 17, 2013 9:46 am

What would an article on building that gun provide that the forum thread does not? In my experience, the step-by-step guides like what I wrote for the APH for more complex builds require a lot of time to create and have little benefit over a few photos of the build combined with descriptions and maybe templates. The point of that guide is to get people used to building water guns so that they don't need so much help for other guns. Anyone with a reasonable mechanical inclination should be able to duplicate and improve the DR-4 based on the photos provided alone.

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Re: Will longer barrels help?

Post by Andrew » Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:59 am

That is a fair point, especially with the detail in those photos. The only real benefit would be to make it easier for some people if the homemade were compiled into one place, rather than spread over two. After all, Fishfan didn't come across he DR-4 in the forums, and I probably only found it as I already knew it was there.

As you said, it wouldn't need to be a guide per se as long as it was easy enough to find, and potential builders could easily find the APH guide (which is probably a fair assumption). The downside is the duplication of these pages. It may be sufficient to have a link to the thread itself, or perhaps a page with a collection of some of the notable homemades (with detailed images of said homemade) and lists of their materials and basic stats. That might be easier for those browsing to find their next potential build (or just looking for good ideas for a new one).

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