Turbulent Flow of Dilute Aqueous Polymer Solutions

1967 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 814-822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Goren ◽  
J. F. Norbury

This paper summarizes some of the research into the effect of polymer additives on turbulent shear flow, which was conducted at the University of Liverpool between October, 1964, and October, 1966. The paper contains a brief description of the research together with a summary of the principal results and conclusions. The present work was devoted to a detailed examination of the mechanism of a particular flow by gathering information on friction drag, velocity distribution, concentration distribution, and correlation with Reynolds number and polymer concentration level. The particular flow chosen was the fully developed turbulent flow in a 2-in-dia pipe of Polyox WSR-301 solutions. A maximum drag reduction of 71 percent was obtained at a Reynolds number of 1.5 × 105 for solutions having polymer concentration of 10 weight parts per million. The drag reduction effect occurred only above some “critical” Reynolds number which was independent of concentration. The polymer additives were found to influence the flow in the neighborhood of a solid boundary. In this zone of the flow, the eddy viscosity was found to be much lower than that of water. In the absence of a boundary, as in free jet flow, the polymer additives had no effect on the flow characteristics. The experiments showed for the first time that the polymer molecules were uniformly distributed across the pipe diameter under all turbulent flow conditions investigated. A method of determining polymer concentration was devised for this purpose.

2019 ◽  
Vol 880 ◽  
pp. 890-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Espen Åkervik ◽  
Magnus Vartdal

The turbulent flow over monochromatic waves of moderate steepness is studied by means of wall resolved large eddy simulations. The simulations cover a range of wave ages and Reynolds numbers. At low wave ages the form drag is highly sensitive to Reynolds number changes, and the interaction between turbulent and wave-induced stresses increases with Reynolds number. At higher wave ages, the flow enters a quasi-laminar regime where wave-induced stresses are primarily balanced by viscous stresses, and the form drag displays a simple Reynolds number dependence. To exploit the quasi-laminar response to the wave kinematics, we split the flow field into a laminar wave-generated response and a turbulent shear flow. The former is driven by the non-homogeneous boundary conditions, whereas the latter is driven by the laminar solution as well as turbulent stresses. For high wave ages, the splitting enables approximate functional dependencies for the form drag to be formulated. In the low wave age regime, where the wave-induced stresses are tightly connected with higher harmonics in the turbulent stresses, the flow is more challenging to analyse. Nevertheless, the importance of higher harmonics in the turbulent stresses can be quantified by explicitly choosing which modes to include in the split-system forcing.


2019 ◽  
Vol 877 ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anselmo S. Pereira ◽  
Roney L. Thompson ◽  
Gilmar Mompean

The transition from laminar to turbulent flows has challenged the scientific community since the seminal work of Reynolds (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 174, 1883, pp. 935–982). Recently, experimental and numerical investigations on this matter have demonstrated that the spatio-temporal dynamics that are associated with transitional flows belong to the directed percolation class. In the present work, we explore the analysis of laminar–turbulent transition from the perspective of the recent theoretical development that concerns viscoelastic turbulence, i.e. the drag-reducing turbulent flow obtained from adding polymers to a Newtonian fluid. We found remarkable fingerprints of the variety of states that are present in both types of flows, as captured by a series of features that are known to be present in drag-reducing viscoelastic turbulence. In particular, when compared to a Newtonian fully turbulent flow, the universal nature of these flows includes: (i) the statistical dynamics of the alternation between active and hibernating turbulence; (ii) the weakening of elliptical and hyperbolic structures; (iii) the existence of high and low drag reduction regimes with the same boundary; (iv) the relative enhancement of the streamwise-normal stress; and (v) the slope of the energy spectrum decay with respect to the wavenumber. The maximum drag reduction profile was attained in a Newtonian flow with a Reynolds number near the boundary of the laminar regime and in a hibernating state. It is generally conjectured that, as the Reynolds number increases, the dynamics of the intermittency that characterises transitional flows migrate from a situation where heteroclinic connections between the upper and the lower branches of solutions are more frequent to another where homoclinic orbits around the upper solution become the general rule.


Author(s):  
Fabio Ernesto Rodriguez Corredor ◽  
Majid Bizhani ◽  
Ergun Kuru

Polymer drag reduction is investigated using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique in fully developed turbulent flow through a horizontal flow loop with concentric annular geometry (inner to outer pipe radius ratio = 0.4). The polymer used was a commercially available partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (PHPA). The polymer concentration was varied from 0.07 to 0.12% V/V. The drag reduction is enhanced by increasing polymer concentration until the concentration reaches an optimum value. After that, the drag reduction is decreased with the increasing polymer concentration. Optimum concentration value of PHPA was found to be around 0.1% V/V. Experiments were conducted at solvent Reynolds numbers of 38700, 46700 and 56400. The percent drag reduction was found to be increasing with the increasing Reynolds number. The study was also focused on analyzing the mean flow and turbulence statistics for fully-turbulent flow using the velocity measurements acquired by PIV. Axial mean velocity profile was found to be following the universal wall law close to the wall (i.e., y+ <10), but it deviated from log law results with an increased slope in the logarithmic zone (i.e., y+ >30). In all cases of polymer application, the viscous sublayer (i.e., y+ <10) thickness was found to be higher than that of the water flow. Reynolds shear stress in the core flow region was found to be decreasing with the increase in polymer concentration.


2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takao Fujita ◽  
Keizo Watanabe

The possibility of fluid slip has received considerable attention in recent years. Laminar drag reduction is achieved by using a hydrophobic wall with fluid slip. Fluid slip is closely related to the gas-liquid interface formed at a solid surface with many fine grooves. The friction generated by the solid boundary is modified considerably because the gas-liquid interface provides a zero-shear stress boundary condition. The purpose of this study is to experimentally clarify the flow characteristics and drag reduction of a hydrophobic wall sphere by visualizing flow and by measuring the drag. In addition, the flow patterns were numerically analyzed by applying a wet boundary condition for fluid slip. The flow visualization results showed that the Vortex Loop was not exist at Re &lt; 400 in the hydrophobic wall sphere and the separation point moved downstream compared with that of a conventionally smooth sphere. Drag reduction occurred in the flow and the maximum drag reduction ratio was 14.6% at Re=93.2. In this simulation, the flow patterns for the numerical simulation results agreed with those of the flow visualization results.


Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Xili Duan ◽  
Yuri Muzychka ◽  
Zongming Wang

This paper presents an experimental study on drag reduction induced by PEO (Polyethylene oxide) in a fully turbulent pipe flow. The objective of this work is to develop a correlation to predict drag reduction using the relaxation time of the polymer additives under dilute solution conditions, i.e., the polymer concentration is less than the overlap concertation. This paper discusses the meaning of relaxation time of polymers, and why the Weissenberg number, a dimensionless number that is related to the relaxation time and shear rate, is independent on the concentration in the dilute solution. Experimental data of drag reduction in a pipe flow are obtained from measurements using a flow loop. A correlation to predict drag reduction with the Weissenberg number and polymer concentration is established and a good agreement is shown between the predicted values and experimental data. The new correlation using the Weissenberg number and polymer concentration is shown to cost less to develop than one using the Reynolds number, in which larger pipes or higher flow rates are required.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-125
Author(s):  
Mithun Kanchan ◽  
Ranjith Maniyeri

Background: Fluid flow in microchannels is restricted to low Reynolds number regimes and hence inducing chaotic mixing in such devices is a major challenge. Over the years, the Immersed Boundary Method (IBM) has proved its ability in handling complex fluid-structure interaction problems. Objectives: Inspired by recent patents in microchannel mixing devices, we study passive mixing effects by performing two-dimensional numerical simulations of wavy wall in channel flow using IBM. Methods: The continuity and Navier-Stokes equations governing the flow are solved by fractional step based finite volume method on a staggered Cartesian grid system. Fluid variables are described by Eulerian coordinates and solid boundary by Lagrangian coordinates. A four-point Dirac delta function is used to couple both the coordinate variables. A momentum forcing term is added to the governing equation in order to impose the no-slip boundary condition between the wavy wall and fluid interface. Results: Parametric study is carried out to analyze the fluid flow characteristics by varying amplitude and wavelength of wavy wall configurations for different Reynolds number. Conclusion: Configurations of wavy wall microchannels having a higher amplitude and lower wavelengths show optimum results for mixing applications.


1963 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Cermak

The concept suggested by Batchelor that motion of a marked particle in turbulent shear flow may be similar at stations downstream from the point of release is applied to a variety of diffusion data obtained in the laboratory and in the surface layer of the atmosphere. Two types of shear flow parallel to a plane solid boundary are considered. In the first case mean velocity is a linear function of logz(neutral boundary layer) and in the second case the mean velocity is slightly perturbed from the logarithmic relationship by temperature variation in thez-direction (diabatic boundary layer). Besides the parameters introduced in previous applications of the Lagrangian similarity hypothesis to turbulent diffusion, the ratio of source height to roughness lengthh/z0is shown to be of major importance. Predictions of the variation of maximum ground-level concentration for continuous point and line sources and the variation of plume width for a continuous point source with distance downstream from the source agree with the assorted data remarkably well for a range of length scales extending over three orders-of-magnitude. It is concluded that results from application of the Lagrangian similarity hypothesis are significant for the laboratory modelling of diffusion in the atmospheric surface layer.


2017 ◽  
Vol 827 ◽  
pp. 448-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Van Buren ◽  
Alexander J. Smits

Experiments are presented that demonstrate how liquid-infused surfaces can reduce turbulent drag significantly in Taylor–Couette flow. The test liquid was water, and the test surface was composed of square microscopic grooves measuring $100~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ to $800~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$, filled with alkane liquids with viscosities from 0.3 to 1.4 times that of water. We achieve drag reduction exceeding 35 %, four times higher than previously reported for liquid-infused surfaces in turbulent flow. The level of drag reduction increased with viscosity ratio, groove width, fluid area fraction and Reynolds number. The optimum groove width was given by $w^{+}\approx 35$.


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