Numerical Simulation on the Effect of Pipe Roughness in Turbulent Flow

Abstract

Numerical simulations were performed to study the influences of pipe roughness and smoothness. 3D modeling was solved via ANSYS-Fluent v2021R1 under the condition of fully-developed turbulent flow in the range of 5,000 < Re < 15,000. The working fluid was distilled water, and thermal-physical properties were at 300K. The model ($k-\epsilon$) was applied in the current study to solve the roughness problem with standard wall functions as the near-wall treatment. In the rough and smooth pipes, the pressure dropped by increasing the Reynolds number (Re). Meanwhile, the rough pipe showed higher pressure loss than a smooth pipe with an average of 40.34%. Moreover, the velocity contours were presented for both cases to discuss the effect of the rough wall on the velocity profiles.