FLUID MECHANICS III

GENERAL SIR JOHN KOTELAWALA DEFENCE UNIVERSITY

Student Name : KDP Damsara

Student No. : ENG/14/036
Stream : Civil Engineering
Intake : 31
Lecturer : Dr. WCDK Fernando
Date : 2016/03/30
 Review
“DNS study of a pipe flow following a step increase in flow rate” by He and Seddighi has
been conducted to study the transient flow in a pipe following a near-step increase of
flow rate from an initial turbulent flow. This article has been published on 2015 by Elsver
Inc. and is an open access article under the CC by license. It is based on previous
studies of He and Jackson 2013, and the studies of unsteady transient flows (Mizushina
et al., 1975; Akhavan et al., 1991; Choi et al., 1997; Maurizio and Stefano, 2000; He and
Jackson, 2009). Before that, experimental investigations of Step acceleration and
deceleration flows have been done.

The transient process undergoes three distinct stages, namely pre-transition, transition,
and fully-developed turbulent flow. The process of boundary layer bypass transition can
be divided into three regions. Those are a buffeted laminar boundary layer, a region with
isolated turbulent spots and a fully turbulent boundary layer. This paper extends
previous DNS studies on the transient channel flow to investigate corresponding
transient flow on pipe. It has been established that channel and pipe flows are similar in
near wall region, but there are various differences between the two flows in the core of
the flow field. In this paper, the authors have compared the transient flows in a pipe and
a channel and discussed the transition mechanisms in a transient flow.

Equations (1), (2), (3) and (4) have been used as a modification of channel flow DNS
code of Seddighi (2011) to conduct this study. The length of the pipe is chosen to be
18R (corresponding to a viscous length of 3200 and 7800 for the initial and final flows,
respectively). To validate the DNS code, steady simulation results at Re Ʈ0=180 and
ReƮ1=437 are compared with the benchmark data of previous experiments.

There are some difficulties which have been faced by the authors while conducting this
study. At the initial steady flow state, the velocity profiles in the pipe and channel flows
overlap each other in y+ <= 20, but differ beyond this region. In a steady pipe flow, the
velocity in the center region is higher than that in the channel flow. Therefore, a slight
difference remains during the pre-transition period due to the response of both flows to
the increase of the flow rate as a “plug” resulting of the inertia effect. But in the transition
period, the profiles of both the pipe and the channel flows reduce significantly in the log
law region during t*=28.8-34.8. Therefor the quantitative difference reduces towards the
later stage and at the end, the difference between the two profiles are in the wake
region.

The responses have been analysed mainly under three categories namely pre-transition
(t* < 21), transition (t* = 21-42), and fully developed stage (t* > 42). Flow statistics have
been made under four categories too. Those are Mean velocity, development of
Reynolds stresses, turbulent viscosity and vorticity Reynolds number.

 
It has been observed that Friction coefficient (Cf) increases rapidly after the
commencement to a much higher value and reaches the maximum at t *=0.22. The value
then reduces gradually, reaching a minimum value at around t∗=∼21 or t+0=92. After
that Cf approaches the steady flow value of the final flow around t *=42. Afterwards there
is not much of changes until t *=∼50, and remains constant thereafter. The friction factors
of the two flows are practically the same before t∗=30.

The transient flow in a pipe after a step increase in flow rate is effectively a laminar flow
followed by a bypass transition. Hence new turbulence is generated and initially
occupies the near wall region. With the completion of the transition it propagates into the
centre region following the completion of the transition. Basically transition in the pipe
and channel flows are similar in the near-wall region. The growths of the turbulent
viscosity and vorticity Reynolds number are quantitatively different in the two flows,
which are attributed to the differences in the velocity gradient developments. These
results may provide useful information for the development of turbulence models.