Experimental Study on Flow-Resistance Law for Small-Diameter Plastic Pipes

Abstract

In this paper the writers report the results of an experimental investigation on flow-resistance law in small-diameter plastic pipes. The experiments were carried out for a wide range of Reynolds number values obtained by varying the discharge and the water temperature. The experimental results are analyzed by both a purely empirical and a semitheoretical approach based on the hypothesis that the velocity distribution has a power-law form. The analysis shows that both the empirical and the semitheoretical approach allow accurate head loss per unit length estimate. In most cases (96–97% of runs) the estimate errors are less than 5%.