Laminar Flow of Non-Newtonian Fluids in an Eccentric Annulus

Abstract

The volumetric flow rate for the steady flow of power-law and Bingham-plastic fluids in eccentric annuli is presented as a series of dimensionless plots. The plots cover a broad range of fluid properties, pipe diameters, eccentricity, and pressure drop. These relationships were obtained by numerically integrating the velocity profile resulting from a finite difference solution of the equations of continuity and motion after transformation into bipolar coordinates. The numerical procedure was verified by comparing calculations with previously published results for the special cases of Newtonian flow in an eccentric annulus and non-Newtonian flow in a concentric annulus and with limited experimental data for Bingham-plastic flow in an eccentric annulus.