Contrib:BondMatt/TurbulentPipeFlow

Introduction

This tutorial will attempt to follow as closely as possible the turbulent pipe flow Fluent tutorial available on Cornell's website but will use the open source CFD solvers Code Saturne and OpenFOAM.

The model is very similar to the laminar pipe flow tutorial with the exception of the dynamic viscosity which is two orders of magnitude smaller at 2E-5kg/m/s. Therefore the Reynolds number, or ratio of inertial to viscous forces, is two order of magnitude higher with a value of 10 000. The flow will clearly be turbulent since viscous forces are minimal and damping will be essentially non existent. Laminar flow can be experimentally observed at much larger Reynolds numbers (up to approximately 100 000 if my memory serves me correctly) with very smooth pipes (I believe ceramics were used in some research) and controlled conditions. This makes sense, with no external disturbance and very low pipe roughness perturbations will be minimal.

Software Versions:

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Salome V4.1.4

Code Saturne V1.4.a (GUI)

OpenFOAM 2.0

Fluent Tutorial

The Cornell University Fluent tutorial can be found here [1].

Is it just me or are the variables 'd' and 'D' reversed in the figure?