Abstract

Turbulent flow in pipes is usually avoided in traditional oil hydraulics. However, using water as a hydraulic fluid, the flow can be regarded as turbulent and the Reynolds number is usually between 10000 and 200000. Most of the pipe models are formed assuming the flow to be as laminar. One pipe model has been developed using a variational method and modal approximation. In this research the applicability of this model to simulate strongly turbulent pipe flow has been studied. The comparison between the simulated and measured results is made in time domain. These results show that this pipe model can be used in practical designing also when the flow is turbulent.

Keywords: turbulent flow, water hydraulics, pipeline, pressure transient