Two‐Point Velocity Correlations in Fully Developed Turbulent Pipe Flow at Shear Reynolds Number of
            Re
            τ
             ≈ 4000

The present work is concerned a comparative study of the decay of swirling turbulent pipe flow downstream of three flow conditioners, the Etoile, the Tube bundle, and the Laws perforate plate, and its effect on accuracy of orifice plate flow meter. The swirl was generated by a double 90° degrees elbows in perpendicular planes. The discharge coefficients were measured with 3 different orifice meters with β = 0.5, 0.62, 0.70 at different Reynolds number. As a conclusion, the experimental study of the three flow conditioners used separately shows that the flow need longer distance for close to fully developed pipe flow and some errors, by reason of the swirl, on the discharge coefficient were inevitable for distance less 12D.

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Large Eddy Simulation of Fully Developed Turbulent Pipe Flow

Volume 2, Parts A and B ◽

10.1115/ht-fed2004-56330 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Sowjanya Vijiapurapu ◽

Jie Cui

Keyword(s):

Reynolds Number ◽

Pipe Flow ◽

Reynolds Numbers ◽

Grid Resolution ◽

Turbulent Pipe Flow ◽

Scale Model ◽

Subgrid Scale ◽

Mean Velocity ◽

Fine Mesh ◽

Large Eddy

Fully developed turbulent pipe flow is investigated by large eddy simulations (LES). The three-dimensional, unsteady, incompressible, filtered continuity and Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates are discretized by a finite difference method. The spatial derivatives are approximated by second order conservative schemes. This scheme eliminates the numerical generation or dissipation of energy. The pressure Poisson equation is solved by FFT method and time is advanced through a third order Runge-Kutta method. The commonly used subgrid scale (SGS) models — the Smagorinsky model and the dynamic model are implemented and simulations are performed for fully developed turbulent pipe flow at two different Reynolds numbers. The flow features in terms of mean velocity as well as higher order turbulence intensities and correlations are presented and compared to experimental and DNS data available in literature. Extensive comparisons are made for cases using different grid resolution, different streamwise domain dimension, different sub-grid scale model, and, at two different Reynolds number. For two Reynolds numbers (5,000 and 30,000) tested in this study, the fine mesh (64 × 96 × 64, circumferential × radial × longitudinal) produces better results than the coarse mesh (32 × 48 × 32), indicating the significance of the grid resolution, especially near the pipe surface. On the fine mesh for the two Reynolds numbers, the results exhibit a slight Reynolds number effect, indicating the mesh needs to be further refined at higher Reynolds number. Simulations were performed for two domain sizes, namely 6D and 12D, where D is the pipe diameter. When the streamwise grid resolution remains unchanged, the two simulations show negligible difference. This ensures that a 6D domain is adequate to include the largest eddies in a fully developed turbulent pipe flow at the current Reynolds number. When the fine mesh is used, the subgrid scale models (Smagorinsky and Dynamic) provide limited contribution to the total turbulent kinetic energy. Although the current results agree quite well with other published LES simulations, when compared with the Law of the wall, benchmark experiments and DNS results, the simulated mean velocity in the log region is higher than the experimental and DNS data. Overall, it was observed that the numerical methods work satisfactorily well for turbulent pipe flows at low and high Reynolds numbers, and, the method has capability to be used in the simulation of flows with practical interest.

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Laminar-to-turbulent transition of pipe flows through puffs and slugs

Journal of Fluid Mechanics ◽

10.1017/s0022112008003315 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 614 ◽

pp. 425-446 ◽

Cited By ~ 76

Author(s):

MINA NISHI ◽

BÜLENT ÜNSAL ◽

FRANZ DURST ◽

GAUTAM BISWAS

Keyword(s):

Reynolds Number ◽

Pipe Flow ◽

Axial Direction ◽

Reynolds Numbers ◽

Turbulent Pipe Flow ◽

Test Facility ◽

Pipe Flows ◽

Laminar To Turbulent Transition ◽

Turbulent Transition ◽

Slug Flows

Laminar-to-turbulent transition of pipe flows occurs, for sufficiently high Reynolds numbers, in the form of slugs. These are initiated by disturbances in the entrance region of a pipe flow, and grow in length in the axial direction as they move downstream. Sequences of slugs merge at some distance from the pipe inlet to finally form the state of fully developed turbulent pipe flow. This formation process is generally known, but the randomness in time of naturally occurring slug formation does not permit detailed study of slug flows. For this reason, a special test facility was developed and built for detailed investigation of deterministically generated slugs in pipe flows. It is also employed to generate the puff flows at lower Reynolds numbers. The results reveal a high degree of reproducibility with which the triggering device is able to produce puffs. With increasing Reynolds number, ‘puff splitting’ is observed and the split puffs develop into slugs. Thereafter, the laminar-to-turbulent transition occurs in the same way as found for slug flows. The ring-type obstacle height, h, required to trigger fully developed laminar flows to form first slugs or puffs is determined to show its dependence on the Reynolds number, Re = DU/ν (where D is the pipe diameter, U is the mean velocity in the axial direction and ν is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid). When correctly normalized, h+ turns out to be independent of Reτ (where h+ = hUτ/ν, Reτ = DUτ/ν and $U_{\tau}\,{=}\,\sqrt{\tau_{w}/ \rho}$; τw is the wall shear stress and ρ is the density of the fluid).

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