Axial conduction and dissipation in oscillatory laminar pipe flow at low and high frequencies

Abstract

The problem of fully developed laminar fluid flow in pipes, driven by an oscillatory pressure gradient, can be solved exactly for the time-dependent velocity field and related quantities such as flow rate and tidal displacement. When dissipation is neglected and the momentary axial variation of temperature is assumed to be linear, the corresponding thermal energy equation describing heat transfer along a pipe connecting two reservoirs at different temperatures can also be solved to yield exact solutions for the time-dependent temperature field, axial heat flux, and effective axial conductivity. In this paper, it is shown that these exact solutions for the unsteady temperature field are invalid at low Womersley numbers because the momentary axial variation of temperature is not linear. When the thermal energy equation is written in quasisteady form, approximate quasisteady analytical solutions can be found for the temperature field, which yield effective axial conductivities several orders of magnitude greater than those given by the low-Womersley-number, unsteady-flow solution. It is also shown that the conditions under which effects of dissipation on axial heat transfer become significant, at high Womersley numbers, can be determined by a simple criterion. When dissipation is significant, exact solutions for the unsteady temperature field are invalid at high Womersley numbers because the momentary axial variation of temperature is also nonlinear.