The fully developed laminar flow of a viscous non-Newtonian fluid in a rough-walled pipe is considered. The fluid rheology is described by the power–law model (covering shear thinning, Newtonian, and shear thickening fluids). The rough surface of the pipe is considered to be fractal, and the surface roughness is measured using surface fractal dimensions. The main focus of this study lies in the theoretical investigation of the influence of the pipe surface roughness on the velocity profile and the Darcy friction factor of an incompressible non-Newtonian fluid. The plotted results demonstrate that shear thinning fluids are the most sensitive to the surface roughness compared with Newtonian and shear thickening fluids. For a particular value of the surface fractal dimension, there exists an intersection point where shear thinning, Newtonian, and shear thickening fluids behave the same way regarding the amplitude of the velocity profile and the friction factor. This approach has a variety of potential applications, for instance fluid dynamics in hydrology, blood flow in the cardiovascular system, and many industrial applications.

In this paper, the study of the fully developed flow of a self-similar (fractal) power-law fluid is presented. The rheological way of behaving of the fluid is modeled utilizing the Ostwald–de Waele relationship (covering shear-thinning, Newtonian and shear-thickening fluids). A self-similar (fractal) fluid is depicted as a continuum in a noninteger dimensional space. Involving vector calculus for the instance of a noninteger dimensional space, we determine an analytical solution of the Cauchy equation for the instance of a non-Newtonian self-similar fluid flow in a cylindrical pipe. The plot of the velocity profile obtained shows that the rheological behavior of a non-Newtonian power-law fluid is essentially impacted by its self-similar structure. A self-similar shear thinning fluid and a self-similar Newtonian fluid take on a shear-thickening way of behaving, and a self-similar shear-thickening fluid becomes more shear thickening. This approach has many useful applications in industry, for the investigation of blood flow and fractal fluid hydrology.

In this paper, a generalization of Poiseuille’s law for a self-similar fluid flow through a tube having a rough surface is proposed. The originality of this work is to consider, simultaneously, the self-similarity structure of the fluid and the roughness of the tube surface. This study can have a wide range of applications, for example, for fractal fluid dynamics in hydrology. The roughness of the tube surface presents a fractal structure that can be described by the surface fractal noninteger dimensions. Complex fluids that are invariant to changes in scale (self-similar) are modeled as a continuous medium in noninteger dimensional spaces. In this work, the analytical solution of the Navier–Stokes equations for the case of a self-similar fluid flow through a rough “fractal” tube is presented. New expressions of the velocity profiles, the fluid discharge, and the friction factor are determined analytically and plotted numerically. These expressions contain fractal dimensions describing the effects of the fractal aspect of the fluid and of that of the tube surface. This approach reveals some very important results. For the velocity profile to represent a physical solution, the fractal dimension of the fluid ranges between 0.5 and 1. This study also qualitatively demonstrates that self-similar fluids have shear thickening-like behavior. The fractal (self-similarity) nature of the fluid and the roughness of the surface both have a huge impact on the dynamics of the flow. The fractal dimension of the fluid affects the amplitude and the shape of the velocity profile, which loses its parabolic shape for some values of the fluid fractal dimension. By contrast, the roughness of the surface affects only the amplitude of the velocity profile. Nevertheless, both the fluid’s fractal dimension and the surface roughness have a major influence on the behavior of the fluid, and should not be neglected.