Analytical Investigations of Incompressible Turbulent Swirling Flow in Stationary Ducts

Abstract

Turbulent swirling flows in stationary cylindrical ducts were investigated analytically using Taylor’s modified vorticity transport theory and von Karman’s similarity hypothesis extended to consider a three-dimensional fluctuating velocity field. The resulting similarity conditions were used to formulate the expression for eddy diffusivity in the entire flow field except in a small region near the pipe wall where a mixing-length expression analogous to that assumed by Prandtl for parallel flow in channels was used. The swirl equation was solved numerically using a constant that was obtained indirectly from an experiment by Taylor, and the analytical results were compared with two different sets of experimental measurements. In both cases, the agreement between experiment and analysis was satisfactory. Some discrepancies appeared when the flow field was predominantly irrotational or in solid-body rotation: This might have been expected since, for these situations, some of the similarity conditions were indeterminate or infinite.