Tutorial 1a (material covered in Module 1):
Some problems are taken from Fox and McDonald 8e, others were written by Dr Nicholas
Williamson.
ENERGY EQUATION, CONTROL VOLUME
(assume the pipe diameter is large so the flow is fully turbulent)
MOODY CHART, FRICTION FACTOR, PIPE FLOW SOLUTION METHODS
2) Sydney town water supply can deliver water to a residential property at 20m of head
(gauge pressure). Your goal is to design a water pipeline around the house. The pipeline will
discharge to ambient. The outlet of the pipe will be 3m above the Sydney town water supply
connection. In your calculations ignore all minor losses. The pipe has a length L, constant
diameter D, roughness e. Assume water flows in the pipe with a uniform velocity profile with
velocity V. In each of the following scenarios determine:
i) the velocity if the pipe has L=20m, D=0.01m,e=0.0001m
ii) the velocity if the pipe has L=20m, D=0.01m,e=0.000001m
iii) the required pipe diameter D, if the flow rate must be must be 4.5litres/min and
L=20m and the pipe is smooth.
(Note: In this problem you may ignore the minor losses at the pipe-pipe joints)
VELOCITY PROFILE
If we assume the velocity profile can be represented by a power law expression then we can use the following
useful results (see pg 353 textbook):
1/n
V (r) ⎛ r ⎞
= ⎜1− ⎟
VMAX ⎝ R ⎠
Vave = Q / A and Q = ∫ V (r). dA
Vave 2n 2
=
VMAX (n +1)(2n +1)
MINOR LOSSES
8) PIPE NETWORK
Given the system sketched below obtain the velocity and flow rates in pipes I, II and III. All
pipes have internal diameter D=0.05m with friction coefficient f=0.02. Pipe III discharges
directly to the atmosphere. Pipe I is 200m long, Pipe II is 50m long and Pipe III is 100m
long. Ignore all minor losses.
Pipe I Pipe II
Water
35m Pip 15m
e II
I
10m
9) A PROBLEM SOLVING QUESTION
A graduate engineer is designing a new dry powder inhaler for delivering drugs to patients.
The inhaler design should have a low resistance to air flow so that a patient can inhale the
powder easily, but also provide enough turbulence inside the inhaler to mix the powder with
the airflow.
The initial inhaler design sketched below consists of a cylindrical housing, which holds the
dry power tablet and a mesh screen, which generates turbulence in the flow.
The important geometric design parameters are, D1 the mouth piece diameter, d the
spacing of a mesh screen turbulence generators and n the number of sheets of mesh in the
device. The length L of the device is fixed.
D1
Mouthpiece
(outlet) d
Flow
Mesh
Dry
Powder
Capsule
The engineer would like to be able to predict the pressure drop through the device as a
function of the important geometric design parameters and other fluid/flow properties. The
engineer plans to build only 8 inhaler prototypes and test them to measure the pressure
drop. You are to help the engineer decide which prototypes to build and what experiments
to perform and how to interpret the results. Specifically determine:
i) what prototypes to build, vary D1 or d or n? how many of each?
ii) what experiments would you perform; e.g. force a particular flow velocity and
measure pressure?
iii) what non-dimensional numbers you would use?
iv) what equation would you suggest to correlate your experimental findings with
pressure loss?
