Viscous Flow Through Tubes of Multiply Connected Cross Sections
Abstract A new method is proposed for estimating the volume flow of a viscous incompressible fluid through a cylindrical tube of multiply connected cross section. The method brackets the magnitude of the volume flow between upper and lower bounds. The essential feature of the method is that the calculation of both upper and lower bounds is based upon the same approximating function for the velocity distribution, thus avoiding the usual approach to a lower bound via the Rayleigh-Ritz method. For multiply connected cross sections of the form discussed, a Rayleigh-Ritz solution of sufficient accuracy becomes extremely laborious. Efforts to solve the problem by relaxation methods are also rendered difficult by the presence of high-velocity gradients in the vicinity of an internal boundary, particularly when this is a small circle. In contrast to these methods the one presented achieves the result with considerably less labor; moreover, the method is directly applicable to simply connected cross sections with many-sided boundaries.