Turbulent flow in smooth and rough pipes

Author(s):  
J.J Allen ◽  
M.A Shockling ◽  
G.J Kunkel ◽  
A.J Smits

Recent experiments at Princeton University have revealed aspects of smooth pipe flow behaviour that suggest a more complex scaling than previously noted. In particular, the pressure gradient results yield a new friction factor relationship for smooth pipes, and the velocity profiles indicate the presence of a power-law region near the wall and, for Reynolds numbers greater than about 400×10 3 ( R + >9×10 3 ), a logarithmic region further out. New experiments on a rough pipe with a honed surface finish with k rms / D =19.4×10 −6 , over a Reynolds number range of 57×10 3 –21×10 6 , show that in the transitionally rough regime this surface follows an inflectional friction factor relationship rather than the monotonic relationship given in the Moody diagram. Outer-layer scaling of the mean velocity data and streamwise turbulence intensities for the rough pipe show excellent collapse and provide strong support for Townsend's outer-layer similarity hypothesis for rough-walled flows. The streamwise rough-wall spectra also agree well with the corresponding smooth-wall data. The pipe exhibited smooth behaviour for , which supports the suggestion that the original smooth pipe was indeed hydraulically smooth for Re D ≤24×10 6 . The relationship between the velocity shift, Δ U / u τ , and the roughness Reynolds number, , has been used to generalize the form of the transition from smooth to fully rough flow for an arbitrary relative roughness k rms / D . These predictions apply for honed pipes when the separation of pipe diameter to roughness height is large, and they differ significantly from the traditional Moody curves.

Author(s):  
Sam Ghazi-Hesami ◽  
Dylan Wise ◽  
Keith Taylor ◽  
Peter Ireland ◽  
Étienne Robert

Abstract Turbulators are a promising avenue to enhance heat transfer in a wide variety of applications. An experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer and pressure drop of a broken V (chevron) turbulator is presented at Reynolds numbers ranging from approximately 300,000 to 900,000 in a rectangular channel with an aspect ratio (width/height) of 1.29. The rib height is 3% of the channel hydraulic diameter while the rib spacing to rib height ratio is fixed at 10. Heat transfer measurements are performed on the flat surface between ribs using transient liquid crystal thermography. The experimental results reveal a significant increase of the heat transfer and friction factor of the ribbed surface compared to a smooth channel. Both parameters increase with Reynolds number, with a heat transfer enhancement ratio of up to 2.15 (relative to a smooth channel) and a friction factor ratio of up to 6.32 over the investigated Reynolds number range. Complementary CFD RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes) simulations are performed with the κ-ω SST turbulence model in ANSYS Fluent® 17.1, and the numerical estimates are compared against the experimental data. The results reveal that the discrepancy between the experimentally measured area averaged Nusselt number and the numerical estimates increases from approximately 3% to 13% with increasing Reynolds number from 339,000 to 917,000. The numerical estimates indicate turbulators enhance heat transfer by interrupting the boundary layer as well as increasing near surface turbulent kinetic energy and mixing.


Author(s):  
Thanesh Deva Asirvatham ◽  
Dara W. Childs ◽  
Stephen Phillips

A flat-plate tester is used to measure the friction-factor behavior for a hole-pattern-roughened surface facing a smooth surface with compressed air as the medium. Measurements of mass flow rate, static pressure drop and stagnation temperature are carried out and used to find a combined (stator + rotor) Fanning friction factor value. In addition, dynamic pressure measurements are made at four axial locations at the bottom of individual holes of the rough plate and at facing locations in the smooth plate. The description of the test rig and instrumentation, and the procedure of testing and calculation are explained in detail in Kheireddin in 2009 and Childs et al. in 2010. Three hole-pattern flat-plates with a hole-pattern diameter of 12.15 mm were tested having depths of 0.9, 1.9, and 2.9 mm. Tests were done with clearances at 0.254, 0.381, and 0.653 mm, and inlet pressures of 56, 70 and 84 bar for a range of pressure ratios, yielding a Reynolds-number range of 100,000 to 800,000. The effects of Reynolds number, clearance, inlet pressure, and hole depth on friction factor are studied. The data are compared to friction factor values of three hole-pattern flat-plates with 3.175 mm diameter holes with hole depths of 1.9, 2.6, and 3.302 mm tested in the same rig described by Kheireddin in 2009. The test program was initiated mainly to investigate a “friction-factor jump” phenomenon cited by Ha et al. in 1992 in test results from a flat-plate tester using facing hole-pattern plates where, at elevated values of Reynolds numbers, the friction factor began to increase steadily with increasing Reynolds numbers. Friction-factor jump was not observed in any of the current test cases.


2007 ◽  
Vol 580 ◽  
pp. 381-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. SCHULTZ ◽  
K. A. FLACK

Turbulence measurements for rough-wall boundary layers are presented and compared to those for a smooth wall. The rough-wall experiments were made on a three-dimensional rough surface geometrically similar to the honed pipe roughness used by Shockling, Allen & Smits (J. Fluid Mech. vol. 564, 2006, p. 267). The present work covers a wide Reynolds-number range (Reθ = 2180–27 100), spanning the hydraulically smooth to the fully rough flow regimes for a single surface, while maintaining a roughness height that is a small fraction of the boundary-layer thickness. In this investigation, the root-mean-square roughness height was at least three orders of magnitude smaller than the boundary-layer thickness, and the Kármán number (δ+), typifying the ratio of the largest to the smallest turbulent scales in the flow, was as high as 10100. The mean velocity profiles for the rough and smooth walls show remarkable similarity in the outer layer using velocity-defect scaling. The Reynolds stresses and higher-order turbulence statistics also show excellent agreement in the outer layer. The results lend strong support to the concept of outer layer similarity for rough walls in which there is a large separation between the roughness length scale and the largest turbulence scales in the flow.


2013 ◽  
Vol 728 ◽  
pp. 376-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Hultmark ◽  
M. Vallikivi ◽  
S. C. C. Bailey ◽  
A. J. Smits

AbstractMeasurements of the streamwise component of the turbulent fluctuations in fully developed smooth and rough pipe flow are presented over an unprecedented Reynolds number range. For Reynolds numbers$R{e}_{\tau } \gt 20\hspace{0.167em} 000$, the streamwise Reynolds stress closely follows the scaling of the mean velocity profile, independent of the roughness, and over the same spatial extent. This observation extends the findings of a logarithmic law in the turbulence fluctuations as reported by Hultmark, Vallikivi & Smits (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 108, 2012) to include rough flows. The onset of the logarithmic region is found at a location where the wall distance is equal to ∼100 times the Kolmogorov length scale, which then marks sufficient scale separation for inertial scaling. Furthermore, in the logarithmic region the square root of the fourth-order moment also displays logarithmic behaviour, in accordance with the observation that the underlying probability density function is close to Gaussian in this region.


2008 ◽  
Vol 601 ◽  
pp. 425-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
MOSES KHOR ◽  
JOHN SHERIDAN ◽  
MARK C. THOMPSON ◽  
KERRY HOURIGAN

Observations have been made of the time-mean velocity profile at midspan in the near-wake of circular cylinders at moderate Reynolds numbers between 600 and 4600, well beyond the Reynolds number of approximately 200 at which the wake becomes three-dimensional. The measured profiles are found to be represented quite accurately by a family of function profiles with known linear instability characteristics. The complex instability frequency is then determined as a function of wake position, using the function profiles. In general, the near wake undergoes a transition from convective to absolute instability; the distance downstream to the point of transition is found to increase over the Reynolds number range investigated. The emergence of a significant region of convective instability is consistent with the known appearance of Bloor–Gerrard vortices. The selected frequency of the wake instability is determined by the saddle-point criterion; the Strouhal numbers for Bénard–von Kármán vortex shedding are found to compare well with the values in the literature.


2015 ◽  
Vol 774 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Smits

Orlandi et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 770, 2015, pp. 424–441) present direct numerical simulations over a very wide Reynolds number range for plane Couette and Poiseuille flows. The results reveal new information on the abrupt nature of transition in these flows, and the comparisons between Couette and Poiseuille flows help to provide a clearer picture of Reynolds number trends, especially with regard to inner/outer layer interactions. The stress distributions give strong support to Townsend’s attached eddy hypothesis, particularly for the wall-parallel component where there has been little experimental data available. The results pose some intriguing questions regarding the reconciliation of the present results with data at higher Reynolds numbers in different canonical flows.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noor Afzal ◽  
Abu Seena

In transitional rough pipes, the present work deals with alternate four new scales, the inner wall transitional roughness variable ζ=Z+∕ϕ, associated with a particular roughness level, defined by roughness scale ϕ connected with roughness function ▵U+, the roughness friction Reynolds number Rϕ (based on roughness friction velocity), and roughness Reynolds number Reϕ (based on roughness average velocity) where the mean turbulent flow, little above the roughness sublayer, does not depend on pipes transitional roughness. In these alternate variables, a two layer mean momentum theory is analyzed by the method of matched asymptotic expansions for large Reynolds numbers. The matching of the velocity profile and friction factor by Izakson-Millikan-Kolmogorov hypothesis gives universal log laws that are explicitly independent of pipe roughness. The data of the velocity profile and friction factor on transitional rough pipes provide strong support to universal log laws, having the same constants as for smooth walls. There is no universality of scalings in traditional variables and different expressions are needed for various types of roughness, as suggested, for example, with inflectional-type roughness, monotonic Colebrook-Moody roughness, etc. In traditional variables, the roughness scale, velocity profile, and friction factor prediction for inflectional pipes roughness are supported very well by experimental data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 851 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivsai Ajit Dixit ◽  
O. N. Ramesh

High Reynolds number is thought to be a fundamental condition essential for the occurrence of log scaling in turbulent boundary layers. However, while log variation of mean velocity is seen to occur at moderate Reynolds numbers in the traditional boundary layer literature, log variations of higher-order moments are evident only at much higher Reynolds numbers, as reported in recent experiments. This observation suggests that, underlying the occurrence of log scaling in turbulent boundary layers, there exists a more fundamental condition (apart from the largeness of Reynolds number) – the requirement of self-similar evolution of a mean-flow quantity of interest along a mean-flow streamline, i.e. the mean advection of the scaled mean quantity of interest is required to be zero. Experimental data from the literature provide strong support for this proposal.


1972 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. W. Townes ◽  
J. L. Gow ◽  
R. E. Powe ◽  
N. Weber

Fully developed turbulent flow in both smooth and rough-walled pipes is investigated for Reynolds numbers from 30,000 to 480,000. The values of mean velocity, root-mean-square values of the fluctuating velocity components, and cross-correlation values of the fluctuating velocities are presented for flow in a smooth pipe and two sand-roughened pipes, R/ε = 208 and R/ε = 26.4. The quantity R/ε is the ratio of the actual pipe radius to the average sand particle size. The experimental measurements for flow in smooth pipes are in good agreement with those of previous investigations throughout the Reynolds number range considered. Several of the rough pipe turbulence quantities show substantial deviations from the corresponding smooth pipe quantities. For rough pipes, the measured uv cross-correlation values approach those predicted empirically from the Reynolds equations for fully developed, axisymmetric flow as the flow approaches the hydraulically smooth case. However, as the Reynolds number is increased and the flow proceeds through the transition region from smooth to fully rough flow and to the fully rough flow region, the values of the uv cross correlation in rough pipes are significantly lower than the predicted values. This difference between predicted and measured data becomes more pronounced as the Reynolds number is further increased and the flow becomes fully rough. The difference between measured and predicted uv values, and other differences between smooth and rough pipe results, suggests that the accepted reduction of the Reynolds equations for flow in smooth pipes is not valid for flow in rough pipes. Thus, the Reynolds equations are re-examined for flow in rough pipes, and it is shown that these equations can be satisfied by the experimental data if secondary flows and angular variations in the mean velocity are postulated.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Stel ◽  
Rigoberto E. M. Morales ◽  
Admilson T. Franco ◽  
Silvio L. M. Junqueira ◽  
Raul H. Erthal ◽  
...  

This article describes a numerical and experimental investigation of turbulent flow in pipes with periodic “d-type” corrugations. Four geometric configurations of d-type corrugated surfaces with different groove heights and lengths are evaluated, and calculations for Reynolds numbers ranging from 5000 to 100,000 are performed. The numerical analysis is carried out using computational fluid dynamics, and two turbulence models are considered: the two-equation, low-Reynolds-number Chen–Kim k-ε turbulence model, for which several flow properties such as friction factor, Reynolds stress, and turbulence kinetic energy are computed, and the algebraic LVEL model, used only to compute the friction factors and a velocity magnitude profile for comparison. An experimental loop is designed to perform pressure-drop measurements of turbulent water flow in corrugated pipes for the different geometric configurations. Pressure-drop values are correlated with the friction factor to validate the numerical results. These show that, in general, the magnitudes of all the flow quantities analyzed increase near the corrugated wall and that this increase tends to be more significant for higher Reynolds numbers as well as for larger grooves. According to previous studies, these results may be related to enhanced momentum transfer between the groove and core flow as the Reynolds number and groove length increase. Numerical friction factors for both the Chen–Kim k-ε and LVEL turbulence models show good agreement with the experimental measurements.


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