University of Hail Faculty of Engineering DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

ME 311 - Fluid Mechanics

Lecture notes

Chapter 9
Flow over immersed bodiesIntroduction to boundary layer

Prepared by : Dr. N. Ait Messaoudene

Based on: Fundamentals of Fluid Mechanics Munson; Young; Okiishi; Huebsch, 6th Edition, John Willey and Sons, 2010. 1st semester 2011-2012

9.1 General External Flow Characteristics

Laboratory experiment

Numerical simulation

A body immersed in a moving fluid experiences a resultant force due to the interaction between the body and the fluid surrounding it. In many cases, the fluid far from the body is stationary and the body moves through the fluid with velocity U (the upstream velocity). In such a case, we can fix the coordinate system in the body and treat the situation as fluid flowing past a stationary body with velocity U. In most practical cases, U may be considered as uniform and constant over time. Even with a steady, uniform upstream flow, the flow in the vicinity of an object may be unsteady. Examples of this type of behavior include the flutter that is sometimes found in the flow past airfoils (wings), the regular oscillation of telephone wires that sing in a wind, and the irregular turbulent fluctuations in the wake regions behind bodies. Flow classification according to the nature of the immersed body: (a) two-dimensional, (b) axisymmetric, (c) three-dimensional. Another classification: (a) streamlined, (b) blunt

Lift and Drag Concepts The forces that a body immersed in a flow experiences can be described in terms of the wall shear stresses due to viscous effects (w)and normal stresses due to the pressure (p). The total resultant force due to the action of the fluid on the body is obtained by integrating these forces over the whole surface of the body (figure a and b). This total force is then decomposed in two components (figure c) : a component in the direction of the flow called drag D; a component normal to the direction of the flow called lift L.

Pressure and shear forces on a small element of the surface of a body.

The x and y components of the fluid force on the small area element dA are

Carrying these integrals requires the knowledge of the distribution of the shear stress and pressure along the surface and the form of the surface, which is often a difficult task. Whenever possible, the lift and drag are rather obtained directly.

The widely used alternative is to define dimensionless lift and drag coefficients and determine their approximate values by means of either a simplified analysis, some numerical technique, or an appropriate experiment. The lift coefficient CL, and drag coefficient CD, are defined as: and

Drag Coefficient Data and Examples Drag coefficient for an ellipse with the characteristic area either the frontal area A = bD or the planform area A = b l

The historical trend of streamlining automobiles to reduce their aerodynamic drag

Character of the drag coefficient as a function of Reynolds number for objects with various degrees of streamlining, from a flat plate normal to the upstream flow to a flat plate parallel to the flow (twodimensional flow).

Characteristics of Flow Past an Object For typical external flows the characteristics of the flow depend very strongly on various parameters. The most important of these parameters are the Reynolds number (for subsonic incompressible flows) and the Mach number (for supersonic compressible flows). Recall that the Reynolds number represents the ratio of inertial effects to viscous effects. So: Re >> 1 : corresponds to inviscid flows Re << 1 : corresponds to negligible inertial forces (negligible mass) Most practical external flows fall within the limits 10<Re<109

For these values of Re, the floes are dominated by inertial forces except in thins regions close to the body surface (boundary layers) or in regions where two streams of fluid of different velocity meet (wakes).

For a small Reynolds number, this region is large.

When Re is large, it is therefore possible to treat flow past an object as a combination of : viscous flow in the boundary layer and inviscid flow elsewhere.

For a large Reynolds number, this region is very thin.

The flow past a blunt object (such as a circular cylinder) also varies with Reynolds number. In general, the larger the Reynolds number, the smaller the region of the flow field in which viscous effects are important (boundary layer). As Re is increased, an additional characteristic of the flow is observed. This is termed flow separation

9.2 Boundary Layer Characteristics

Boundary Layer Structure and Thickness on a Flat Plate

Distortion of a fluid particle as it flows within the boundary layer. The transition from a laminar boundary layer to a turbulent boundary layer occurs at a critical value of the Reynolds number (ReLcr) on the order of 2x105 to 3x106 depending on the roughness of the surface and the amount of turbulence in the upstream flow.

the boundary layer thickness is defined as that distance from the plate at which the fluid velocity is some arbitrary fraction of the upstream velocity (typically 99 %)

The boundary layer concept is based on the fact that the boundary layer is thin. For the flat plate flow this means that at any location x along the plate, /x << 1 if we do not get too close to the leading edge of the plate.

Prandtl/Blasius Boundary Layer Solution For steady, two-dimensional laminar flows with negligible gravitational effects, the governing NavierStokes equations reduce to the following:

In addition to the continuity equation

The appropriate boundary conditions are that the fluid velocity far from the body is the upstream velocity and that the fluid sticks to the solid body surfaces.

Since the boundary layer is thin, it is expected that : the component of velocity normal to the plate is much smaller than that parallel to the plate and that the rate of change of any parameter across the boundary layer should be much greater than that along the flow direction. That is:

With these assumptions, added to the fact that for boundary layer flow over a flat plate the pressure is constant throughout the fluid, it can be shown that the governing equations reduce to the following boundary layer equations:

Boundary conditions: and

In mathematical terms, the NavierStokes equations are elliptic equations, whereas the equations for boundary layer flow are parabolic equations. The nature of the solutions to these two sets of equations, therefore, is different. Physically, this fact translates to the idea that what happens downstream of a given location in a boundary layer cannot affect what happens upstream of that point. On the other hand, the elliptic nature of the N-S equations means that flow information propagates in all directions, including upstream. It can be argued that in dimensionless form the boundary layer velocity profiles on a flat plate should be similar regardless of the location along the plate. That is,

By applying an order of magnitude analysis of the forces acting on fluid within the boundary layer, it can be shown that

introduce the dimensionless similarity variable = (U/x)1/2 and a function f() such that: and u and v will automatically satisfy the continuity equation and the boundary layer equation becomes:

with B.C:

There is no analytical solution to this equation but it is relatively easy to integrate this equation on a computer. The dimensionless boundary layer profile, obtained by numerical solution of this equation is termed the Blasius solution. From the solution it is found that u /U = 0.99 when = 5

Which can be written as:

With the velocity profile known, it is an easy matter to determine the wall shear stress: where is computed from the Blasius solution

It is often convenient to use the dimensionless local friction coefficient, defined as

The Blasius solution gives

For a flat plate of length l and width b, the total friction drag can be expressed in terms of a friction drag coefficient as:

or The Blasius solution gives

where