Chapter 7: Viscous Flow in Pipes

Outline

• General Characteristics of Pipe Flow

• Fully Developed Laminar Flow
• Fully Developed Turbulent Flow
• Pipe Flow Examples
• Pipe Flowrate Measurement
 General Characteristics of Pipe Flow

Pipe flow vs channel flow:

• For open channel flow, gravity alone is the driving force—the water flows down a hill.
• For pipe flow, gravity may be important (the pipe need not be horizontal),
• For pipe flow, the main driving force is the pressure gradient along the pipe.
• If the pipe is not full, it is not possible to maintain this pressure difference,
Laminar vs Turbulent

Flow Characteristic
Laminar
Transient
Turbulent
 Example 7.1

Water at a temperature of 50 °F flows through a pipe

of diameter D=0.73 in. and into a glass as shown in the Figure.

Determine
(a) the minimum time taken to fill a 0.0125 with water if the flow
in the pipe is to be laminar.
Repeat the calculations if the water temperature is 140 °F.

(b) the maximum time taken to fill the glass if the flow is to be
turbulent.
Repeat the calculations if the water temperature is 140 °F.
 Example 7.1

Temperature [°F] Viscosity Density

50 1.94
40 1.91

−5
𝜌𝑉𝐷 𝜇𝑅𝑒 2. 73×10 ×2100 ft
𝑅𝑒= ⟹𝑉= = =0. 486
𝜇 𝜌𝐷 1. 94 ×(0 . 73/12) s
 Example 7.2

Given two pipes, one with a diameter of 10 cm and the other with a diameter of 1 m, at what velocities will the
flows in each pipe become turbulent?
The fluid is the distilled water at 20 C ( μ= kg/m.s, ρ=998.2 kg/m3.
Assume that Reynolds number is Re =2100
Entrance Region and Fully Developed Flow

• Viscosity imposes itself on the flow and the "No Slip" condition at the wall of the pipe comes into effect.
• Close to the wall the velocity increases slowly from zero at wall to a uniform velocity towards the center of the pipe.
• The boundary layer is formed consequently
• Viscous effects are dominant within the boundary layer
• Outside of this layer is the inviscid core where viscous effects are negligible or absent.
Entrance Region and Fully Developed Flow

The entry length is usually taken to be the distance from the pipe entrance to where the wall shear
stress (and thus the friction factor) reaches within about 2 percent of the fully developed value. In
laminar flow, the hydrodynamic entry length is given approximately as:

𝜕𝑝
=𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡
𝜕𝑥
 Fully Developed Laminar Flow

Force Balance:
The force balance cab be written as:

Which can be simplified to give:

At (the centerline of the pipe) there is no shear stress , and at , the shear stress will be maximum ,
thus:

The pressure drop and wall shear stress are related by:
 Fully Developed Laminar Flow

Velocity Profile:
Integrate both side and simplify, we get:
As discussed in chapter 3, the shear stress is
simply proportional to the velocity gradient,
thus: Where is the centerline velocity, the above equation can
be written on other expression as:

The volume flowrate through the pipe can be obtained

In the notation associated with the pipe flow, this by integrating the velocity profile across the pipe:
becomes:

We know that, , so:

 Fully Developed Laminar Flow

Energy Considerations:

The general form of the pressure drop in pipe flow for laminar regime is given by:

Head loss:

• Recall that:

or
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

Turbulent Shear Stress:

The fundamental difference between laminar and

turbulent flow lies in the chaotic, random behavior of
the various fluid parameters. Such variations occur in
the three components of velocity, the pressure, the
shear stress, the temperature, and any other variable
that has a field description:

• Thus, if is the x component of instantaneous

velocity, then its time mean (or time-average) value,
Turbulent flow shear stress
, is:
is larger than laminar flow
shear stress because of the
irregular, random motion.
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

Turbulent Shear Stress:

is called the Reynolds’ stresses

Turbulent flow shear stress

is larger than laminar flow
shear stress because of the
irregular, random motion.
Fully Developed Turbulent Flow
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

An alternative form for the shear stress for turbulent flow is given in terms of the eddy viscosity, ,where:
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

Turbulence intensity:
It is defined as the level of the turbulence, and given by:
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

Turbulence velocity profile:

In the viscous sublayer the velocity profile can be written in dimensionless form as:

Where is the distance measured from the wall, is the time-averaged x component of velocity, and is
termed the friction velocity.

Dimensional analysis arguments indicate that in the overlap region the velocity should vary as the
logarithm of y. Thus, the following expression has been proposed:
 Fully Developed Turbulent Flow

Turbulence velocity profile:

The velocity profile in turbulent flow is given by:

In this representation, the value of n is a function of the Reynolds number. The one-seventh power-law velocity
profile (n = 7) is often used as a reasonable approximation for many practical flows