Turbulent Pipe Flow-3D

Analysis Characteristics

• Steady-state
• 3D internal flow
• Turbulent
• Incompressible

Reference

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

Problem Description

A three dimensional quarter section of a circular pipe is analyzed to verify the fluid flow and turbulence modeling in Autodesk® CFD. The pressure drop is measured well downstream of the entrance length from 50 meters upstream of the outlet to the outlet:

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 Blasius expression:

Substituting = 50m, = 2356.2 and Re = 15000 into the expressions above, the following results are computed:

	Benchmark	2015: Build 20131223	% Error	2016: Build 20150209	% Error
	4.02E5 Pa	384681.94 Pa	4.20	384419.92 Pa	4.26