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Abstract There is a need for a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology, capable of accurately predicting the pressure fluctuations and visualizing liquid column separation/rejoining resulting from the transient events of water hammer in pipes. The existing One-Dimensional (1D) models show a discrepancy between the predicted cavity behavior and the physical cavity visualized by experiments. This discrepancy is attributed to the 1D assumption that vapor cavities, when formed, fill the whole cross-section of the pipe without radial variation.In this context, a Three-Dimensional (3D) model is proposed to remove the 1D assumption and better describe the phenomena of water hammer accompanied by column separation in pipelines systems.The adopted CFD model is based on the Finite-Volume (FV) discretization technique. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model and Schnerr-Sauer cavitation model are used to describe the multiphase flow and the transient vaporous cavitation, respectively. Moreover, the shear-stress transport (SST) turbulence model is applied to model the Reynolds stresses using the Boussinesq hypothesis.Several simulated cases are presented, alongside their comparison with available experimental/numerical results from the literature. The results of the present method shows the superiority of adopted procedure to simulate water hammer with/without column separation. |