The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomena of the pressure wave propagation in branched, volume-terminated, pneumatic transmission lines. Analytical and experimental results in the time domain are presented to show the interaction between load capacitances (volumes).
The one-dimensional, linear, distributed-parameter transmission line theory for uniform lines by Schuder and Binder is extended to branched pneumatic transmision lines, and the pressure step response of branched lines and the pole-zero configuration of transfer functions are shown. By using the pole-zero configuration, the function of load capacitances on the branched line system and the mechanism of the interaction between load capacitances can be explained readily.
The experimental results for negative pressure steps are compared with the analytical results. Agreement between experiment and numerical solutions based on the simplified analytical model is relatively good.