Energy principle

Dr. Yuan Jing, Assistant Professor

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore

1. Mechanical energy of a fluid particle

In hydraulics, we primarily concern about the mechanical energy of the fluid, but what is the
mechanical energy of a fluid particle? The mechanical energy is the sum of kinematic energy
and potential energy. The kinematic energy per unit volume of a fluid particle is readily defined
as:

Thus, the remaining issue is the potential energy. The basic concept to obtain potential energy is
that:

“If you have energy, you can do work.”

Let us consider a very simple case: flow through a very small orifice on a large bucket of water,
as shown in Figure 1. Here we put the z=0 datum at the level of orifice’s centerline. Since the
orifice is very small, we can neglect the flow velocity in the bucket and assume a hydrostatic
condition, expect for the region very close to the orifice. For a hydrostatic condition, all fluid
particles should be neutrally buoyant and only have potential energy (since velocity=0), so we
can vertically move a fluid particle at z=0 (P1 indicated by the blue full circle) to the free surface
(P2 indicated by the dashed circle) without doing any work to it. Thus, the fluid particles at P1
and P2 have the same potential energy. The potential energy at P2 can be understood by
horizontally move it out of the bucket to P3. This conceptual fluid particle at P3 now can be used
to some work, e.g. it can be used to lift a weight through a pulley system. Therefore, the potential
energy per unit volume of the conceptual fluid particle at P3 is just its gravity potential energy
per unit volume:

e   gh

This is equal to the potential energy per unit volume at P2 or P1, or any fluid particle at rest in the
bucket. Since hydrostatics gives:
 p   gz  const   gh

We now define the “potential” potential energy of per unit volume of the fluid as:

ep  p   gz

As you can see, the “potential” potential energy is the gravity potential energy (ρgz) plus the
water pressure p. This can be interpreted as that the fluid particle at the free-surface of the bucket
can do the same amount of work as a fluid particle at the bottom of the bucket.

Figure 1 Flow through a very small orifice on a large bucket of water

A fluid particle leaving the bucket through the orifice has no “potential” potential energy as it
passes the vena contracta, since both z and p are zero, but it possesses some kinematic energy per
unit volume:

From Bernoulli equation:

1 1 2
ek   | q |2   2 gh   gh
2 2

Considering the bucket up to the vena contracta as a “system”, it is clear that the system loss
“potential” potential energy (ρghδV), when a volume (δV) exits through the vena contracta,
whereas the “outside world” gains the kinematic energy of the existing volume (1/2ρq2δV=
ρghδV), which is just the loss of the potential energy of the “system”.

From the preceding discussion it follows that the Bernoulli equation can be considered to express
that the mechanical energy of a fluid particle remains constant as it moves about (without
friction!):

(1)

We can also define a total mechanical energy head:

(2)

If we use the notation “V” for velocity, this is just the total head!

2. Conservation of mechanical energy for a control volume

Let us consider a mechanical energy of a control volume, as shown in Figure 2. Similar to a bank
account, the change of the total mechanical energy within a control volume (your money balance)
is equal to the net energy that transported into (or out of) the control volume by inflows and
outflows (deposit or withdraw) plus some other mechanisms that can change the mechanical
energy within the control volume (interest or fee). Here the “other mechanisms” can include loss
of mechanical energy due to friction forces (you all know that when you rub your hands your
mechanical energy becomes the internal energy of you hand, so you lose mechanical energy) and
machinery inputs (a pump within the control volume can input mechanical energy). We treat all
mechanisms that take away mechanical energy from the control volume as energy dissipation
and all mechanisms that input mechanical energy to the control volume as energy gains, so the
rate of change of mechanical energy within the control volume is given by:

(3)

where:
As for the momentum principle, we can choose inflow and outflow areas at where the flow is
well behaved, i.e. velocity is uniform and perpendicular to the area, so:

Figure 2 Conservation of mechanical energy for a control volume

For a steady flow without any machinery to input mechanical energy, we have:

If there is only one inflow and one outflow area, and the control volume is fixed in space, then
the continuity requires Qin=Qout=Q, so:

or:

(4)

The right-hand side term is the defined as the total head loss between the inflow and outflow
area. Eq. (4) is also called the generalized Bernoulli equation. The restrictions on applying this
equations are:
  The flow must be steady
 The flow is well-behaved at inflow and outflow areas

You should always check these two restrictions before applying the generalized Bernoulli
equation.

3. Head losses

The total head loss in Eq. (4) can be the sum of head losses due to various factors. For pipe flows,
the two major head losses are frictional loss (or major loss) and expansion loss (or minor loss).

Frictional loss (major loss)

Let us consider the simple case of flow through a long straight pipe, as shown in Figure 3. We
consider the head loss due to friction over finite length Δs along the pipe. The pipe’s cross-
section area is A and the perimeter of solid-fluid contact is P. Assuming the shear stress at the
fluid-wall interface is uniform, the shear force is:

F   s  area   s sP

The dissipation rate is the shear force times the fluid velocity (recall that the work done by a
force on an object is force times velocity):

Ediss  F V   s sP V

Here V is the average velocity of pipe flow. The corresponding head loss is:

Thus, Eq. (4) becomes:

 s sP
H in  H out  (5)
 gA

This is just Eq. (20) in the lecture note “Momentum Principle”. That equation is obtained by
applying conservation of linear momentum to a stream tube (a pipe can be considered a stream
tube), where here is based on energy consideration.
 Figure 3 Head loss due to friction on the pipe wall

Eq. (5) is not the end of the discussion on frictional loss, since we do not know the shear stress.
The shear stress in pipe flows will introduced in another lecture note.

Expansion head loss (minor loss)

The expansion head loss occurs when the cross-section area of the flow increases, or the flow
velocity decreases in the flow direction. A classic example is a sudden expansion of pipe’s cross-
section area, as shown in Figure 4. The inflow pipe’s cross-section area A1 is smaller than the
outflow pipe’s cross-section area A2. The inflow is well-behaved at BG. Immediately
downstream to BG, the flow is of course not well-behaved, but it becomes well-behaved again a
downstream boundary DE. The distance for the flow to re-organize, CD, is very short, so we can
neglect the friction along CD and FE. We also assume that the flow is in 2D and in the xy-plane,
very narrow, so we do not need to consider the variation of the gravity head, z, as well as the
gravity force. It should be noted that the following conclusions based on these simplifications
can also be applied when the flow is not 2D or not in the xy-plane.

A fluid particle in motion possesses some momentum which prevents a sudden change of its
movement. Therefore, the fluid particles passing by point B and G in Figure 4 cannot make a
sharp 90 degree turn to follow the boundary of the pipe. The actual streamline connecting point
B or G to the downstream are the dashed blue lines, so the main flow is between these two
streamlines. In the region near the corners, some eddies of low velocity swirling fluid are
produced, which takes mechanical energy from the main flow and dissipate it as heat. Thus a
head loss due to expansion is created.
The head loss can be calculated as follows. Let us apply Eq. (4) between BG and DE. From
continuity we have:

V1 A1  V2 A2  Q (6)

We denote the pressure at the centroid of BG and DE is p1 and p2 respectively. Measurements

confirm that the pressure along walls BC and GF is very close to p1. We can consider the
conservation of momentum in the flow direction for a control volume CDEF:

MPBG  FBC  FGF  MPDE   flow-direction component of forces on CD and EF (7)

where:

MPBG  A1 ( p1  V12 )
FBC  FGF  p1 ( A2  A1 )
MPDE  A2 ( p2  V2 2 )

Since the forces on CD and EF are perpendicular to the flow direction, so:

MPBG  FBC  FGF  MPDE  0

Thus:

A2 p1   AV
1 1  A2 p2   A2V2
2 2

Divide both side by A2:

A1 2
p1   V1  p2  V2 2
A2

We can do some manipulation:

A1 QV QV Q
p1  p2  V2 2  V12   2   1   (V2  V1 )  V2 (V2  V1 ) (8)
A2 A2 A2 A2

The head loss is given by:

p1 V2 p V2 p p V2 V 2
H  (  z1  1 )  ( 2  z2  2 )  ( 1  2 )  ( 1  2 )  ( z1  z2 ) (9)
g 2g g 2g g g 2g 2g
The gravity related term, i.e. the last bracket on the right-hand side of Eq. (9) is zero, as the xy-
plane assumption of the problem. Substitute in Eq. (8) we can get:

p1 p V2 V 2
H  (  2 )( 1  2 )
g g 2g 2g
V2 (V2  V1 ) V12 V2 2
 (  )
g 2g 2g
(10)
(V2  V1 ) 2

2g
V12 A1
 (  1) 2
2 g A2

As A2 becomes increasingly larger than A1, you can see that the head loss become increasingly
closer to the velocity head, meaning that it is possible to dissipate all kinematic energy of the
fluid. When does this happen? The situation that a pipe flow entries a huge reservoir of which A2
is very large.

Figure 4 Illustration of expansion head loss

When can we neglect head loss?

The best situation to apply Eq. (4) is when the head loss is zero, which reduces the Eq. (4) to the
Bernoulli equation, but when can we neglect head loss?

“The head loss is zero when the flow experiences a short converging transition.”
“Converging” means that the velocity in the direction of flow is increasing. “Short” means that
the friction head loss can be considered negligible. As we will learn later, the shear stress for
pipe flow is given by:

1
s  f V 2 (11)
8

where f is a friction factor. Thus, the friction head loss for flows in a circular pipe over a
transition with a length of Δs is:

1
 s sP 8 f V sP f Ps V 2
2

H f    ( )
 gA  gA 4 A 2g

For this head loss to be negligible, we must have:

f Ps V 2 V2
H f  ( )  (12)
4 A 2g 2g

Or:

fP s
( )s  f   1
4A D

where D is the diameter of the circular pipe. A typical value for f is 0.02, so a short transition
means that:

D
s   50 D (13)
f

Therefore, the length of the transition must be much shorter than 50 times the diameter of the
pipe. Otherwise, the transition cannot be considered “short”.

When shall we never neglect head loss?

It is obvious that we cannot neglect head loss for a long distance of flow path. In addition, we
cannot neglect head loss for “expanding” or “diverging” flow, even if the transition is short.
“Expanding” means that the velocity in the direction of flow is decreasing.

From Bernoulli equation, the fluid pressure increases in the direction of flow for an “expanding”
flow. This pressure variation is called “adverse pressure”. A fluid particle experiencing adverse
pressure will be slow down or even turned around, unless it has enough momentum. The flow
velocity must approach zero towards the solid-fluid interface to meet the “no-slip condition”, so
the fluid momentum near the solid-fluid interface is very low and it does not take much to turn it
around: the flow separates from the boundary creating an eddy of low velocity swirling fluid that
extracts energy from the main flow and causes a head loss, as indicated by the eddies at the
corners in Figure 4.