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Sub: Engineering

Topic: Mechanical Engineering

LAMINAR AND TURBULENT FLUID FLOWS

If youve ever traveled on an airplane, you might recall the pilot instructing you to fasten your seat belt because of the turbulence associated with severe weather patterns or airflow over mountain ranges. You may also have had other firsthand experiences with laminar and turbulent fluid flows. Try opening the valve on a garden hose (without a nozzle) by just a small amount, and watch how water streams out of it in an orderly fashion. The shape of the water stream doesnt change much from moment to moment, which is a classic example of laminar water flow. As you gradually open the valve, youll eventually reach a point where the smooth stream of water starts to oscillate, break up, and become turbulent. What was once glassy-looking water is now disrupted and uneven. In general, slowly flowing fluids appear laminar and smooth, but, at a high enough speed, the flow pattern becomes turbulent and random-looking. When fluid flows smoothly around an object, as in the sketch of airflow around a sphere, the fluid is said to move in a laminar manner. Laminar flow occurs when fluid is moving relatively slowly. As fluid moves faster past the sphere, the flows pattern begins to break up and become random, particularly on the spheres trailing edge. The irregular flow pattern is said to be turbulent. Small eddies and whirlpools develop behind the sphere, and the fluid downstream of the sphere has been severely disrupted by its presence. The criterion to determine whether a fluid moves in a laminar or turbulent pattern depends on several factors: the size of the object moving through the fluid (or the size of the pipe or duct in which the fluid is flowing); the speed of

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Sub: Engineering

Topic: Mechanical Engineering

the object (or of the fluid); and the density and viscosity properties of the fluid. The exact relationship among those variables was discovered in the latter half of the nineteenth century by a British engineer named Osborne Reynolds, who conducted experiments on the transition between laminar and turbulent flow through pipes. A dimensionless parameter, which is now recognized as being the most important variable in fluids engineering, was found to describe that transition. The Reynolds number (Re) is defined by the equation

Re=
, in terms of the fluids density and viscosity, its speed v, and a characteristic length l that is representative of the problem at hand. For crude oil that is being pumped through a pipe, the characteristic length l is the pipes diameter; for water flowing past the sphere, l is the spheres diameter; for the ventilation system in a building, l is the diameter of the air duct; and so forth. The Reynolds number has the physical interpretation of being the ratio between the inertia and viscous forces acting within a fluid; the former is proportional to density (Newtons second law), and the latter is proportional to viscosity. When the fluid moves quickly, is not very viscous, or is very dense, the Reynolds number will be large, and vice versa. The inertia of a fluid tends to disrupt it and to cause it to flow irregularly. On the other hand, viscous effects are similar to friction, and, by dissipating energy, they can stabilize the fluid so that it flows smoothly.

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Sub: Engineering

Topic: Mechanical Engineering

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