1.

BACKGROUND

1.1

Flow and drag

When there is relative motion between a body and a fluid, as

when a body moves through a fluid at rest or when a fluid flows
over a body, there is a force on the body. The component of
force in the direction of the relative motion is called drag, and
the component of force normal to the direction of relative
motion is called lift.
The force on a body depends on the shape, attitude and size
of the body, the density and viscosity of the fluid, and the
velocity of relative motion. It may also in some circumstances
depend on things such as the surface rough-ness of the body
and the unsteadiness or turbulence in the fluid stream, but
these will not be considered in this experiment. It will also
depend on other parameters when the relative velocity is
suciently high to be comparable with the speed of sound in
the fluid, but in this experiment, velocities are relatively low.
In these experiments you will be examining the flow around
various objects, and the forces generated on them at fairly high
Reynolds numbers: they are large enough for viscous forces
generated in the boundary layers around the shapes (skin
friction) not to be significant, but not so large that the boundary
layers are turbulent. At these Reynolds numbers, the flow
around the back of the shapes can separate and cause a wake
to form. This flow pattern generates an asymmetrical pressure
distribution around the object that causes it to feel a force.
1.2

Drag on a body

There are generally two major contributions to drag: skin

friction drag and pressure drag. Skin friction drag is caused by
the generation of boundary layers on the surface of the object.
It is therefore generated by viscosity and so is dominant at low
Reynolds numbers. Pressure drag is caused by the inertia of the
fluid which means that at high speeds, a suciently large
pressure gradient can often not be generated on a curving body
that will allow the fluid to follow it, so it separates, causing the
formation of a turbulent are of fluid called awake. There is low
pressure in the wake compared with the stagnation pressure at
the front of the object, and so generates a net drag force. This
contribution is controlled by the fluids density and is dominant
at high Reynolds numbers.
For high Reynolds numbers when the contribution to drag
from the pressure distribution is much larger than the
contribution from shear stress in the boundary layers (this is
experimentally a convenient assumption to make because
pressure is easy to measure, shear force is not), then for the
cylinder shown in figure 1, the drag per unit length on an
element of length s is
D= p cos s

or for the entire cylinder,

D= p cos

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of flow around a cylinder (from

TQ Education and Training manual).

Or dimensionless form
D
1
U2 d
2
CD=

1
p
cos ds

d 1
2
U
2

1
C cos ds
d P

When the pressure coefficient,

Cp=

p
1
p U2
2

For cylinder
d
s=
2

Where d is the diameter of cylinder, so that

2

CD=

1
C cos d
2 0 p

Or by symmetry,

C D = C p cos d
0

For an inviscid flow, it can be shown that the pressure coecient distribution
around the cylinder will be given by
2

C p =14 sin

Figure 2: Schematic diagram for estimating the drag on a

cylinder from the wake defect (from TQ Education and
Training manual)

1.3

Drag estimation from a wake traverse

Following Newtons second law of motion, the drag on an object will cause
the momentum of a gas flow to drop. It is then possible to estimate drag by
measuring and comparing the momentum in a flow before and after an
object; so, from Bernoullis equation, for the object shown in Figure 2, the
drag force
h

D=3 h po + U 2 dy 2 h p c + u 2 dy
h

Putting this in terms of a drag coecient, per unit length of cylinder,

h
2 h po p c 2
u2
CD=
=
+ 1 2 dy
1
d 1
d h
U
U2 d
U 2
2
2

Now defining the velocity defect u` = U u, and substituting it in, for the
experimental situation,

y
d

C D =2
y
d

( (

u
u
1
U
U

)) d dy

This form of the equation only applies to objects in straight-sided ducts.

2.0

THEORY

Drag coecient:

1 / 2 V 2

V D