ME231/ME/IITK/Spring 2015

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ME231: Home Assignment 8

Due: April 08, 2015; in-class
Use Moody diagram or Colebrook correlation for friction factor calculation
1. (50 points) The bathroom plumbing of a building, shown in Fig 1, consists of 1.5cm

diameter GI pipes (roughness 1.5m). For an inlet gage pressure is 200kPa, determine the
volume flow rate of water through the shower when (a) the toilet reservoir is full, and (b)
the toilet reservoir is empty. Please note that the toilet reservoir is equipped with a float
valve. Minor loss coefficients are tabulated below:
Minor loss

Elbow/ Tee

Globe valve

Float valve

Shower head

0.9

10

14

12

2. (50 points) A pump is drawing 7kW electricity, for supplying water from reservoir A
to B through parallel pipelines, as shown in Fig 2. Both the reservoirs are open to
atmosphere and the pipelines, made of polymer, are newly-installed. Assuming
hydrodynamically smooth pipe and neglecting minor losses in the pipeline and pump,
calculate the volume flow rate in each branch of the pipeline.

Fig 1. Bathroom plumbing (Problem 1)

Fig 2. Parallel piping (Problem 2)