In this paper, we use the well-known background method to obtain a rigorous lower bound on the volume flow rate through a helical pipe driven by a pressure differential in the limit of large Reynolds number. As a consequence, we also obtain an equivalent upper bound on the friction factor. These bounds are also valid for toroidal and straight pipes as limiting cases. By considering a two-dimensional background flow with varying boundary layer thickness along the circumference of the pipe, we obtain these bounds as a function of the curvature and torsion of the pipe and therefore capture the geometrical aspects of the problem. In this paper, we also present a sufficient criterion to find out which pressure-driven flow and surface-velocity-driven flow problems can be tackled using the background method.
New families of three-dimensional nonlinear travelling waves are discovered in pipe flow. In contrast to known waves (Faisst & Eckhardt Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 224502 (2003), Wedin & Kerswell, J. Fluid Mech. 508, 333 (2004)), they possess no rotational symmetry and exist at much lower Reynolds numbers. Particularly striking is an `asymmetric mode' which has one slow streak sandwiched between two fast streaks located preferentially to one side of the pipe. This family originates in a pitchfork bifurcation from a mirror-symmetric travelling wave which can be traced down to a Reynolds number of 773.…
A parametric numerical study of three-dimensional instability of steady flows in a helical pipe of arbitrary curvature and torsion is carried out. The computations are performed by a numerical approach verified against independent experimental and numerical results in a previous study. The results are reported as dependences of the critical Reynolds number, critical wavenumber and the critical frequency on the dimensionless pipe curvature and torsion. A multiplicity of different disturbance modes becoming most unstable at different values of the governing parameters, is observed. Patterns of t…
A zonal similarity analysis of friction factors in pipe flow of power law fluids is presented. It uses the critical Reynolds number and friction factor at transition as estimates of the normalised velocity and distance between the wall and log-law layers and successfully collapses both Newtonian and non-Newtonian data for laminar, transition and turbulent flows. Key words: zonal similarity analysis, friction factor, Reynolds number, transition
A computational study of three-dimensional instability of steady flows in a helical pipe of arbitrary curvature and torsion is carried out for the first time. The problem is formulated in Germano coordinates in two equivalent but different forms of the momentum equation, so that results obtained using both formulations cross verify each other. An additional formulation in the cylindrical coordinates is applied for a limiting case of the toroidal pipe. The calculations are performed by the finite volume and finite difference methods. Grid independence of the results is established for both stea…
Turbulence intensity profiles are compared for smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow measurements made in the Princeton Superpipe. The profile development in the transition from hydraulically smooth to fully rough flow displays a propagating sequence from the pipe wall towards the pipe axis. The scaling of turbulence intensity with Reynolds number shows that the smooth- and rough wall level deviates with increasing Reynolds number. We quantify the correspondence between turbulence intensity and the friction factor.
This study focuses on a parametric study of the laminar fast transient flow of non-Newtonian fluids through helical pipes. Classical simulations of fluid hammer do not deal with the pipeline helicity and non-Newtonian characteristics of the fluid, while the present work addresses those features. To this end, the power-law model is employed to accommodate the non-Newtonian behavior of the fluid. Effects of the pipe wall elasticity and compressibility of the working fluid are taken into account through a modified bulk modulus elasticity of the fluid. The results of the three-dimensional numerica…
We show that the main results of the analysis of the friction factor for turbulent pipe flow reported in G. Gioia and P. Chakraborty (GC), Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 044502 (1996) can be recovered by assuming the Heisenberg closure hypothesis for the turbulent spectrum. This highlights the structural features of the turbulent spectrum underlying GC's analysis.
The impact of wall roughness on fully developed laminar pipe flow is investigated numerically. The roughness is comprised of square bars of varying size and pitch. Results show that the inverse relation between the friction factor and the Reynolds number in smooth pipes still persists in rough pipes, regardless of the rib height and pitch. At a given Reynolds number, the friction factor varies quadratically with roughness height and linearly with roughness pitch. We propose a single correlation for the friction factor that successfully collapses the data.
The classical experiments on turbulent friction in rough pipes were performed by J. Nikuradse in the 1930's. Seventy years later, they continue to defy theory. Here we model Nikuradse's experiments using the phenomenological theory of Kolmogórov, a theory that is widely thought to be applicable only to highly idealized flows. Our results include both the empirical scalings of Blasius and Strickler, and are otherwise in minute qualitative agreement with the experiments; they suggest that the phenomenological theory may be relevant to other flows of practical interest; and they unveil the existe…
An asymptotic $-1/2$ power-law scaling and a semi-empirical finite-$Re$ model were recently presented by Dixit et al. (2020) for skin friction in zero-pressure-gradient (ZPG) turbulent boundary layers (TBLs). In this work, a new derivation is presented which shows that these relations (i) fundamentally represent a dynamically-consistent scaling of skin friction for nominally two-dimensional ZPG TBLs and fully-developed pipes and channels, and (ii) apply individually to each of these flows. The new theoretical arguments are based on transfer of kinetic energy from mean flow to large eddies of t…
We examine experimentally the deformation of flexible, microscale helical ribbons with nanoscale thickness subject to viscous flow in a microfluidic channel. Two aspects of flexible microhelices are quantified: the overall shape of the helix and the viscous frictional properties. The frictional coefficients determined by our experiments are consistent with calculated values in the context of resistive force theory. Deformation of helices by viscous flow is well-described by non-linear finite extensibility. Under distributed loading, the pitch distribution is non-uniform and from this, we ident…
This paper uses the estimates of phase-locked parameters at the onset of bursting presented in a companion paper to derive logarithmic correlations for turbulent friction factor losses in time-independent power law fluids. Two different techniques for analysis were used. They gave logarithmic correlations with different coefficients. But both correlations predicted 264 data points of friction factors published in the literature with a standard error of 1.3%. The derivations show how modern understanding of coherent structures embedded in turbulent flow fields can be used to derive engineering …
The Blasius empirical correlation for turbulent pipe friction factors is derived from first principles and extended to non-Newtonian power law fluids. Two alternative formulations are obtained that both correlate well with the experimental measurements of Dodge, Bogue and Yoo. Key words: Blasius, turbulent friction factor, power law fluids
The friction f is the property of wall-bounded flows that sets the pumping cost of a pipeline, the draining capacity of a river, and other variables of practical relevance. For highly turbulent rough-walled pipe flows, f depends solely on the roughness length scale r, and the f -- r relation may be expressed by the Strickler empirical scaling f $\propto$ r$^{\frac{1}{3}}$. Here, we show experimentally that for soap film flows that are the two-dimensional (2D) equivalent of highly turbulent rough-walled pipe flows, f $\propto$ r and the f -- r relation is not the same in 2D as in 3D. Our findin…
Helical symmetry is invariance under a one-dimensional group of rigid motions generated by a simultaneous rotation around a fixed axis and translation along the same axis. The key parameter in helical symmetry is the step or pitch, the magnitude of the translation after rotating one full turn around the symmetry axis. In this article we study the limits of three-dimensional helical viscous and inviscid incompressible flows in an infinite circular pipe, with respectively no-slip and no-penetration boundary conditions, as the step approaches infinity. We show that, as the step becomes large, the…
Laminar flows through pipes driven at steady, pulsatile or oscillatory rates undergo a sub-critical transition to turbulence. We carry out an extensive linear non-modal stability analysis of these flows and show that for sufficiently high pulsation amplitudes the stream-wise vortices of the classic lift-up mechanism are outperformed by helical disturbances exhibiting an Orr-like mechanism. In oscillatory flow, the energy amplification depends solely on the Reynolds number based on the Stokes-layer thickness and for sufficiently high oscillation frequency and Reynolds number, axisymmetric distu…
We use momentum transfer arguments to predict the friction factor $f$ in two-dimensional turbulent soap-film flows with rough boundaries (an analogue of three-dimensional pipe flow) as a function of Reynolds number Re and roughness $r$, considering separately the inverse energy cascade and the forward enstrophy cascade. At intermediate Re, we predict a Blasius-like friction factor scaling of $f\propto\textrm{Re}^{-1/2}$ in flows dominated by the enstrophy cascade, distinct from the energy cascade scaling of $\textrm{Re}^{-1/4}$. For large Re, $f \sim r$ in the enstrophy-dominated case. We use …
We study streamwise turbulence intensity definitions using smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow measurements made in the Princeton Superpipe. Scaling of turbulence intensity with the bulk (and friction) Reynolds number is provided for the definitions. The turbulence intensity scales with the friction factor for both smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow. Turbulence intensity definitions providing the best description of the measurements are identified. A procedure to calculate the turbulence intensity based on the bulk Reynolds number (and the sand-grain roughness for rough-wall pipe flow) is outlined.
The velocity and friction properties of laminar pipe flow of a viscoelastic solution are bounded by the corresponding values for two Newtonian fluids, namely, the solvent and a fluid with a viscosity identical to the total viscosity of the solution. The lower friction factor for the flow of the solution when compared to the latter is tracked to an increased strain rate needed to enhance viscous dissipation. Lastly, we show analytically that the effective viscosity varies similarly to the radial diagonal component of the conformation tensor as observed numerically in turbulent flows, and give a…
Well-resolved direct numerical simulations (DNSs) have been performed of the flow in a smooth circular pipe of radius $R$ and axial length $10πR$ at friction Reynolds numbers up to $Re_τ=5200$. Various turbulence statistics are documented and compared with other DNS and experimental data in pipes as well as channels.Small but distinct differences between various datasets are identified. The friction factor $λ$ overshoots by $2\%$ and undershoots by $0.6\%$ of the Prandtl friction law at low and high $Re$ ranges, respectively. In addition, $λ$ in our results is slightly higher than that in Piro…
We study turbulent flows in a smooth straight pipe of circular cross--section up to $Re_τ \approx 6000$ using direct--numerical-simulation (DNS) of the Navier--Stokes equations. The DNS results highlight systematic deviations from Prandtl friction law, amounting to about $2\%$, which would extrapolate to about $4\%$ at extreme Reynolds numbers. Data fitting of the DNS friction coefficient yields an estimated von Kármán constant $k \approx 0.387$, which nicely fits the mean velocity profile, and which supports universality of canonical wall-bounded flows. The same constant also applies to the p…
We show that the Fukagata et al. (2002)'s identity for free-stream boundary layers simplifies to the von Karman momentum integral equation relating the skin-friction coefficient and the momentum thickness when the upper bound in the integrals used to obtain the identity is taken to be asymptotically large. If a finite upper bound is used, the terms of the identity depend spuriously on the bound itself. Differently from channel and pipe flows, the impact of the Reynolds stresses on the wall-shear stress cannot be quantified in the case of free-stream boundary layers because the Reynolds stresse…
Turbulence is the major cause of friction losses in transport processes and it is responsible for a drastic drag increase in flows over bounding surfaces. While much effort is invested into developing ways to control and reduce turbulence intensities, so far no methods exist to altogether eliminate turbulence if velocities are sufficiently large. We demonstrate for pipe flow that appropriate distortions to the velocity profile lead to a complete collapse of turbulence and subsequently friction losses are reduced by as much as 95%. Counterintuitively, the return to laminar motion is accomplishe…
A global approach to analysis of fully developed turbulent flows in pipes/channels and zero pressure gradient boundary layers is proposed. A new dynamic definition of the boundary layer thickness $δ(x)$, where $x$ is the distance to the plate origin, is proposed. The Coles - Fernholtz empirical correlation for skin friction $λ=\frac{2τ_{w}}{ρU_{0}^{2}}\propto 1/\ln^{2}δ(x)$ and $δ(x)\propto x/\ln^{2}(\frac{x}{x_{0}})$ are derived from the Navier-Stokes equations in the limit $Re_{x}\to \infty$. Here $τ_{w}$ and $U_{0}$ are the wall shear stress and free stream velocity, respectively. The theor…
Transition to turbulence in straight pipes occurs in spite of the linear stability of the laminar Hagen--Poiseuille flow if the amplitude of flow perturbations as well as the Reynolds number exceed a minimum threshold (subcritical transition). As the pipe curvature increases centrifugal effects become important, modifying the basic flow as well as the most unstable linear modes. If the curvature (tube-to-coiling diameter $d/D$) is sufficiently large a Hopf bifurcation (supercritical instability) is encountered before turbulence can be excited (subcritical instability). We trace the instability…
Twisted tapes are used to induce swirling flow and improve mixing. The flow induced by a 180 degree twisted tape with length (pitch) 60 mm and diameter 25.4 mm in a circular pipe was investigated using Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) measurements. Tangential velocity profiles downstream of the twisted tape swirler were measured at multiple locations along the pipe axis, across the horizontal diameter of the pipe. The profiles showed an unexpected transition along the pipe axis from regular swirling flow to an apparent counter-rotation near the pipe axis, and then reverting back to regular swir…
A wide and critical comparison of the capability of Method of Characteristics, Explicit Path-Conservative Finite Volume Method and Semi-Implicit Staggered Finite Volume Method is presented and discussed, in terms of accuracy and efficiency. The viscoelastic behaviour of the pipe wall, the effects of the unsteadiness of the flow on the friction losses, cavitation and cross-sectional changes are considered. The analyses are performed comparing numerical solutions obtained using the three models against experimental data and analytical solutions. Water hammer studies in high density polyethylene …
As everyone knows who has opened a kitchen faucet, pipe flow is laminar at low flow velocities and turbulent at high flow velocities. At intermediate velocities there is a transition wherein plugs of laminar flow alternate along the pipe with "flashes" of a type of fluctuating, non-laminar flow which remains poorly known. We show experimentally that the fluid friction of flash flow is diagnostic of turbulence. We also show that the statistics of flash flow are in keeping with Kolmogorov's phenomenological theory of turbulence (so that, e.g., the energy spectra of both flash flow and turbulent …
Drag reduction and subcritical turbulence in controlled pipe flows
Politecnico di Milano（米兰理工大学）；Univ. Lille, CNRS, ONERA, Arts et Metiers Institute of Technology, Centrale Lille（里尔大学、法国国家科学研究中心、法国航空发展局、巴黎国立高等工艺学院、里尔中央理工学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
In this paper we solve the inviscid inertial wave solutions in a circular pipe or annulus rotating constantly about its axis with moderate angular speed. The solutions are constructed by the so-called helical wave functions. We reveal that the mean velocity profiles must satisfy certain conditions to accommodate the inertial waves at the bulk region away from boundary. These conditions require the axial and azimuthal components of the mean velocity take the shapes of the zeroth and first order Bessel functions of the first kind, respectively. The theory is then verified by data obtained from d…
We experimentally assess the capabilities of an active, open-loop technique for drag reduction in turbulent wall flows recently introduced by Quadrio et al. [J. Fluid Mech., v.627, 161, (2009)]. The technique consists in generating streamwise-modulated waves of spanwise velocity at the wall, that travel in the streamwise direction. A proof-of-principle experiment has been devised to measure the reduction of turbulent friction in a pipe flow, in which the wall is subdivided into thin slabs that rotate independently in the azimuthal direction. Different speeds of nearby slabs provide, although i…
The swirling secondary flow in curved pipes is studied in three-space dimensions using a weakly compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) formulation coupled to new non-reflecting outflow boundary conditions. A large-eddy simulation (LES) model for turbulence is benchmarked with existing experimental data. After validation of the present model against experimental results for a 90 grades pipe bend, a detailed numerical study aimed at reproducing experimental flow measurements for a wide range of Reynolds numbers has been performed for different pipe geometries, including U pipe bend…
Drawing on an analogy to critical phenomena, it was shown that the Nikuradse turbulent friction factor ($f_t$) measurements in pipes of radius $R$ and wall roughness $r$ can be collapsed onto a one-dimensional curve expressed as a conveyance law $f_t Re^{1/4}=g_o(χ)$, where $Re$ is a bulk Reynolds number, $χ=Re^{3/4}\left({r}/{R}\right)$. The implicit function $g_o(.)$ was conjectured based on matching two asymptotic limits of $f_t$. However, the connection between $g_o(.)$ and the phenomenon it proclaims to represent - turbulent eddies - remains lacking. Using models for the wall-normal veloc…
It is shown that initiated by action of molecular viscosity impulse flow, directed usually from the moving fluid to limiting it solid surface, can, under certain conditions, turn to zero and get negative values in the case of non-stationary flow caused by alternating in time longitudinal (along the pipe axis) pressure gradient. It is noted that this non-equilibrium mechanism of negative friction resistance in the similar case of pulsating blood flow in the blood vessels, in addition to the stable to turbulent disturbances swirled blood flow structure providing, can also constitute hydro-mechan…
This paper gives a new unified formula for the Newtonian fluids valid for all pipe flow regimes from laminar to the fully rough turbulent. It includes laminar, unstable sharp jump from laminar to turbulent, and all types of the turbulent regimes: smooth turbulent regime, partial non-fully developed turbulent and fully developed rough turbulent regime. The formula follows the inflectional form of curves as suggested in Nikuradse's experiment rather than monotonic shape proposed by Colebrook and White. The composition of the proposed unified formula consists of switching functions and of the int…
We extend the procedure outlined in [Basse, "Scaling of global properties of fluctuating and mean streamwise velocities in pipe flow: Characterization of a high Reynolds number transition region," Phys. Fluids Vol. 33, 065127 (2021)] to study global, i.e. radially averaged, scaling of streamwise velocity fluctuations. A viscous term is added to the log-law scaling which leads to the existence of a mathematical abstraction which we call the "global peak". The position and amplitude of this global peak are characterized and compared to the inner and outer peaks. A transition at a friction Reynol…
The flow instability and further transition to turbulence in a toroidal pipe (torus) with curvature (tube-to-coiling diameter) 0.049 is investigated experimentally. The flow inside the toroidal pipe is driven by a steel sphere fitted to the inner pipe diameter. The sphere is moved with constant azimuthal velocity from outside the torus by a moving magnet. The experiment is designed to investigate curved pipe flow by optical measurement techniques. Using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry, laser Doppler velocimetry and pressure drop measurements, the flow is measured for Reynolds numbers r…
We study the global, i.e. radially averaged, high Reynolds number (asymptotic) scaling of streamwise turbulence intensity squared defined as ${I^2=\overline{u^2}/U^2}$, where $u$ and $U$ are the fluctuating and mean velocities, respectively (overbar is time averaging). The investigation is based on the mathematical abstraction that the logarithmic region in wall turbulence extends across the entire inner and outer layers. Results are matched to spatially integrated Princeton Superpipe measurements [Hultmark M, Vallikivi M, Bailey SCC and Smits AJ. Logarithmic scaling of turbulence in smooth- a…
Relaminarization of wall-bounded turbulent flows by means of external static magnetic fields is a long-known phenomenon in the physics of electrically conducting fluids at low magnetic Reynolds numbers. Despite the large literature on the subject, it is not yet completely clear what combination of the Hartmann ($M$) and the Reynolds number has to be used to predict the laminar-turbulent transition in channel or pipe flows fed by upstream turbulent flows free of magnetic perturbations. Relying upon standard phenomenological approaches related to mixing length and structural concepts, we put for…
We analyze a possible extension of Gioia and Chakraborty's momentum transfer model of friction in steady turbulent pipe flows (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 044502 (2006)) to the case of time and/or space dependent turbulent flows. The end result is an expression for the stress at the wall as the sum of an steady and a dynamic component. The steady part is obtained by using the instantaneous velocity in the expression for the stress at the wall of a stationary flow. The unsteady part is a weighted average over the history of the flow acceleration, with a weighting function similar to that proposed by V…
In this paper we present electro-osmotic (EO) flow within a more traditional fluid mechanics framework. Specifically, the modified Bernoulli equation (viz. the energy equation, the mechanical energy equation, the pipe flow equation, etc.) is shown to be applicable to EO flows if an electrical potential energy term is also included. The form of the loss term in the modified Bernoulli equation is unaffected by the presence of an electric field; i.e., the loss term still represents the effect of wall shear stress, which can be represented via a friction factor. We show that that the friction fact…
Based on a novel control scheme, where a steady modification of the streamwise velocity profile leads to complete relaminarization of initially fully turbulent pipe flow, we investigate the applicability and usefulness of custom-shaped honeycombs for such control. The custom-shaped honeycombs are used as stationary flow management devices which generate specific modifications of the streamwise velocity profile. Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry and pressure drop measurements are used to investigate and capture the development of the relaminarizing flow downstream these devices. We compar…
Swirl-switching is a low-frequency oscillatory phenomenon which affects the Dean vortices in bent pipes and may cause fatigue in piping systems. Despite thirty years worth of research, the mechanism that causes these oscillations and the frequencies that characterise them remain unclear. Here we show that a three-dimensional wave-like structure is responsible for the low-frequency switching of the dominant Dean vortex. The present study, performed via direct numerical simulation, focuses on the turbulent flow through a 90 \degree pipe bend preceded and followed by straight pipe segments. A pip…
This paper presents a new theory of turbulence in time-independent non-Newtonian fluids. The wall layer is modelled in terms of unsteady exchange of viscous momentum between the wall and the main stream, following the classic visualisation of inrush-sweep-ejection/burst. The thickness of the wall layer is found to be the same for Newtonian and purely viscous non-Newtonian fluids, when normalised with the instantaneous wall parameters at the onset of bursting. The results indicate that the mechanisms of turbulence in Newtonian and time-independent fluids are identical when structural similarity…
The transitional and well-developed regimes of turbulent shear flows exhibit a variety of remarkable scaling laws that are only now beginning to be systematically studied and understood. In the first part of this article, we summarize recent progress in understanding the friction factor of turbulent flows in rough pipes and quasi-two-dimensional soap films, showing how the data obey a two-parameter scaling law known as roughness-induced criticality, and exhibit power-law scaling of friction factor with Reynolds number that depends on the precise form of the nature of the turbulent cascade. The…
The Karman constant κ- widely used in atmospheric science and engineering turbulence modelling, and proposed by Prandtl in 1925 and von Karman in 1930 to describe the mean velocity of a turbulent wall-bounded flow - leads to a logarithmic profile in an overlap region near the wall. For over eighty years, its value was believed to be ~0.41. But more recently, many argue that it is not a constant, because of measured variations in different flows and at different Reynolds numbers (Re). Here, a multi-layer analytic theory is shown to lead to a re-interpretation of κas a global constant for both t…
