APL107 Tutorial Sheet 6: Pipe and Duct flows, Major and Minor Losses

Instructor: Amitabh Bhattacharya

These problems are for your practice. You do NOT have to submit the solved sheets as assignments.
Selected problems will be discussed during the tutorials. Take gravity g=9.8 m/s2 if it is not
mentioned in the problem. You may also assume that density of water = 1000 kg/m3 and specific
gravity of mercury = 13.6. The dynamic viscosity of water may be assumed to be .

For all the problems below, please use Moody chart (or Haaland’s correlation) and Tables for minor
losses shared in the lecture slides.

1. For straightening and smoothing an airflow in a 50 cm diameter duct, the duct is packed with a
“honeycomb” of thin straws of length 30 cm and diameter 4 mm as shown in the figure below. The
fluid at the inlet is is air ( ), moving at a bulk velocity of 6
m/s. Estimate the pressure drop across the honeycomb.

2. The tank-pipe system shown below needs to deliver at least 11 m 3/h of water to the reservoir.
What is the maximum roughness height allowable for the pipe ? Neglect minor losses for this
problem.
3. Consider the duct with trangular cross section shown below (length L=60 cm). The triangle is
isoceles with included angle at the top, and has side . If the bulk velocity is V=2
m/s and fluid has kinematic viscosity of , density of 900 kg/m3, then find the pressure
drop across the duct.

4. In the setup shown below, the pipe entrance is sharp-edged. If the flow rate is 0.004 m 3/s, what
power in W is extracted by the turbine ?
5. For the system of pipes shown below, all pipes are 8 cm diameter asphalted cast iron. Total
pressure drop between 1 and 2 is 750 kPa. Find the resulting flow rate Q in m 3/hr if the fluid is
water. Neglect minor losses.

6. Consider flow through a sudden expansion of cylindrical pipe, as shown below. The pipe has
cross section A1 before the expansion and cross section A2 after the expansion. A recirculation forms
in the flow at the entrance of the larger pipe, due to which we can assume that at the vertically
oriented surface, fluid pressure is given as pa=pb=p1 . Show, using conservation of momentum and
the CV shown below, that the loss coefficient due to the expansion is .