AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF TURBULENT FLOW IN CONCENTRIC ANNULUS USING PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY TECHNIQUE

Fully developed turbulent flow in a concentric annulus is encountered in many engineering problems including food, chemical as well as oil industry applications. Because of nonlinear radial variation of total shear stress with the distance from the pipe wall, the analysis for the flow in annulus is more complex than in a round tube or parallel plate channel. In this study, fully developed turbulent flow of water through a horizontal flow loop with concentric annular geometry (inner to outer pipe radius ratio = 0.4) was investigated. Reynolds number range varied from 17,700 to 66,900. Velocity near the wall region was measured using high resolution particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. Axial mean velocity profile was found to be following the universal wall law (i.e., u+ = y+) close to the wall (for y+ < 10) and log law away from the wall (y+>10). For all the cases investigated, radial positions of the maximum velocity and zero shear stress were very close to each other (+/- 0.5 mm). The difference between the both locations were found to be varying from 1.3 to 3.3% (2% on the average).