Experimental Investigation on Pressure Drop in Corrugated Pipes

Abstract

The characteristics of pressure drop in corrugated pipes were experimentally studied in both straight and helically coiled configurations. The present study employed the stainless-steel pipes with the corrugation of circular cross section, which are widely used in boilers and pipe systems between solar panels and boilers. The diameters of corrugated pipes were 20.4, 25.4, 34.5 and 40.5 mm. The corrugated pipe, approximately 10 m in length, was configured either in the straight manner or in the helical coil with the helix diameter of 0.43 or 0.64 m. Water stored in a tank was fed into a corrugated pipe by a pump while the flow rate was controlled by a control valve. The friction factors of the pipes remain constant over the range of Reynolds number from 4,000 to 50,000, indicating that the flow in the pipe was fully turbulent. When the pipe was straightly configured, the friction factors were measured to be 0.070, 0.075, 0.12 and 0.22 for the diameter of 20.4, 25.4, 34.5 and 40.5 mm, respectively. Thus the present study showed that the friction factors increased with the increasing diameter of the pipe. This result is clearly contrary to a rare experimental result available in the literature. On the other hand, as expected, the friction factor for the helically coiled configuration was higher than that of the straight configuration with the same tube diameter, and the configuration of the smaller helix diameter yielded the larger friction factor. The reason for the increasing friction factor with the increasing pipe diameter remains to be explored further.

Investigation of a corrugated channel flow with an open source PIV software

“…02107-p. 4 EFM 2015 For laminar flow regime and for turbulent flow with Re = 3243.87, the software gave reasonable result. For transient and turbulent flow with Re = 7340.02 analysis, the accuracy was lower.…”

“…The pressure drop needs to be investigated for proper heat transfer rates and proper implementation of corrugated pipes. To understand this, particle image velocimetry is also used [4]. The vortices in the grooves enhance the turbulent flow.…”

Experimental Studies on Pressure Drop Characterization of Curved Tube Sections in Laminar Flow Regime

“…Sharma et al [9] investigated the performance of Coriolis flow meter for three different sets of U tube configurations with the effect of parameters such as sensor position and drive frequency for minimum percentage error in measurements. Ahn and Uslu [10] experimentally studied the pressure drop characteristics of straight and corrugated helically coiled configurations of 10 m length in fully turbulent flow and noticed an increasing trend of friction factor with an increase in pipe diameter.…”