Laminar Axisymmetric Pipe Flow

Analysis Characteristics

• Steady-state
• 2D internal flow
• Axisymmetric
• Laminar
• Incompressible

Reference

White, F.M., Fluid Mechanics, McGraw-Hill (1986).

Problem Description

A 2D circular pipe is analyzed to verify the fluid flow modeling capabilities of Autodesk Simulation CFD. The Reynolds number based on the pipe diameter, , is 477. The pressure drop is measured across an interval approximately 60m downstream of the inlet:

Geometry and Boundary Conditions

Results

Analytical and numerical calculations of pressure drop are compared. The analytical expression for pressure drop from White (1986) is:

• is the Darcy friction factor
• is the mass flow
• is the pipe length across which is measured

The Darcy friction factor is computed from the linear expression:

This pressure drop equation applies to fully developed flows so the pressure drop extracted from the numerical results starts from a point that is 60.0 meters down-stream of the inlet.

Using these parameters:

• =40 .0m.

= 75.0

=477

in the expressions above, the following results are computed:

	Benchmark	2012: Build 20110628	% Error	2013: Build 20120131	% Error
	1528 Pa	1537.95 Pa	0.616	1499.44 Pa	1.958