J. Cent. South Univ. Technol.

(2007)s1−0077−05
DOI: 10.1007/s11771−007−0219−5

New assessment of friction factor correlations for power law fluids

in turbulent pipe flow: A statistical approach

GAO Peng(高 鹏), ZHANG Jin-jun(张劲军)

(Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Oil and Gas Distribution Technology,
China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China)

Abstract: A new statistical approach to assessing the friction factor correlations was presented. Fourteen correlations, published from
1959 to 2003, were collected to calculate friction factors for power law fluids in turbulent pipe flow. A series of Fanning friction
factors, f, were computed from these equations. Then the relations between the calculated values of f and ReMR (Metzner-Reed
Reynolds number) were analyzed, when the rheological behavior index, n, was given. To verify the foregoing analysis result, in
addition, the relations between the calculated values of f and n were analyzed, when ReMR was given. The f value calculated from
each equation was compared with each mean value of all the f values from the 14 equations, when each combination (n, ReMR) (n
ranging from 0.4 to 1.4 and ReMR from 4 000 to 100 000) was set. The comparison results were surveyed in the relative deviation
table of the calculated f values. It shows that the overall mean relative deviation (OMRD) of the Dodge-Metzner correlation is the
minimum, 1.5%. Therefore, the Dodge-Metzner correlation is recommended for predicting the friction factors for the turbulent pipe
flow of power law fluids.

Key words: friction factor; turbulence; power law fluids; hydraulic analysis; fluid mechanics

correlations and the approach via the apparent viscosity

1 Introduction
The power law fluid is one of the most typical
non-Newtonian fluids. The common method in
calculating pressure drops for turbulent flow of power
law fluids in pipes is to adopt the Darcy-Weisbach
equation, where the key is to determine the value of the
Fanning friction factors, f. Although the abundant
correlations are available for calculating friction factors
for turbulent pipe flow of the power law fluids, not all
those could predict friction factors accurately and
advances are still being made. Besides some earlier
correlations, a number of new ones were published (or
introduced) in a large number of open literatures in the
last decade.
Table 1 presents a large number of the correlations
in calculating friction factors for the turbulent pipe flow
of the power law fluids, but it is still so far unknown
which one is more accurate than the others. So it is
necessary to evaluate them in order to provide a basis for
relevant hydraulic calculation of the non-Newtonian
fluids[1−12].
For the earlier published methods in calculating
friction factor for the turbulent flow of the power law
fluids in pipes, some work of comparison in part had
been carried out. GONG et al[13] compared five earlier
methods such as the K&K, D&M, Clapp, Drew
Corresponding author: ZHANG Jin-jun, Professor; Tel: +86-10-89734627; E-mail: zhangjj@cup.edu.cn
to calculating f using the data of a planning pipeline of
crude oil, and then concluded that the relative errors of
the five methods were all less than 10%. The authors
suggested selecting different methods to determine the
bounds of the friction loss values in the pipeline design
and prediction, and making some experiments of pipe
flow for modification of the selected correlation to meet
the practice. But they did not refer to other equations
published at that time, and did not definitely recommend
a correlation.
EL-EMAM et al[11] assessed ten correlations of
friction factors by using the open experimental data via
three statistical analysis indexes, including percent mean
deviation, percent standard deviation and percent error.
Afterwards they thought the equations could only fit
their individual test data well, and had poor
generalization to the data from the others. So they
developed a new equation, Eqn.9 (Table 1), by applying
regression analysis to correlate f with the Metzner-Reed
Reynolds number ReMR and the rheological behavior
index n. Their comparison showed the new regression
equation be the most accurate one to calculate f. Lastly
they compared three field data with ones predicted by
Eqn.9 and got the cross plot indicating good accuracy.
Although Eqn.9 seemed to be the most accurate among
these correlations, it was purely empirical. Above all, the
verifying data were the same as the most regression
78 J. Cent. South Univ. Technol. 2007, 14(s1)

Table 1 Turbulent friction factor correlations for power law fluids

Correlation and
No. Equation Year Reference
its abbr.
1 Dodge and (1−n′/2)
1/ f = 4.0 /( n ′) 0.75 lg[ReMRf ]−0.4/(n′)1.2 1959 [1]
Metzner (D&M)
2 The Blasius type f=a/Re bMR , where a=0.066 5+0.011 75n′
1959 [1]
of Eqn.1 (D&MB) and b=0.365−0.177 5n′+0.062 5n′2
.314 n 2.3 −0.064
3 Kemblowski and f=0.002 25 exp(3.57n2)exp[572(1−n4.2)/n0.435ReMR]/Re 0MR
0.435 1973 [2]
Kolodziejski (K&K) When ReMR>316 00/n , then f=0.079 1/Re 0MR
.25

Hanks and Ricks /(1.87 + 2.39 n )

4 f=fT=0.0682 n−1/2/Re 1MR 1975 [3−5]
(H&R)
Bobok and Navratile 1−n/2
5 1/ f = 4/n·lg[ReMR(4f) ]+1.5111/n(4.242+1.414/n)−8.03/n−2.114 1981 [6−7]
and Szilas (BNS)
0.615 (1+ 0.75 n )
6 Shenoy (Sh) 1/ /n
f = 3.57lg[Re 1MR / 6.51 / n ] 1986 [8]
Desouky and
7 f=0.125 n n
(0.011 2+Re −MR
0.318 5
) 1990 [9]
El-Emam (D&El)
0.901 3
1/ f = 3.536−392.081(f/n′) −305.624(f/n′)0.901 3·
8 Hemeida (He) ⎡ln(1 − 1 − 14.142 / Re f ) + 1 − 14.142 / Re MR f ⎤
1993 [10]
⎢⎣ MR ⎥⎦

El-Emam and Kamel

n′ /( 0.282− 4.211n′)
9 and El-Shafei and f=[n′/(3.072−0.143 3 n′)Re MR −0.000 65]/4 2003 [11]
El-Batrawy (EKSB)
Shaver and
10 f=0.079/(n5Re αMR ), α=2.63/10.5n 1959 [6, 12]
Merrill (S&M)
1 / f To = 4lg(ReTo f To )−0.4,
11 Tomita (To) where fTo=(4/3)[(1+2n)/(1+3n)]f 1959 [12]
and ReTo=(3/4)[(1+3n)/(1+2n)]ReMR
12 Thomas (Th) 1/ f = 4/n′lg(ReMRf
(1−n′/2)
)−0.4/n′ 1960 [11]
13 Clapp (Cl) 1/ f = 2.69/n′−2.95+4.53/n′lg[ReMRf
(1−n′/2)
]+0.68(5n′−8/n′) 1961 [12]

14 Stein and Kessler 0.5

1/ f = 1.737 3 ln(ReMRf −0.398) 1980 [11]
and Greendar SKG)

ones, so its generalization needs evaluating.
2 Comparison and evaluation for friction
factor correlations
Generally speaking, it is supposed to compare the
prediction data with the measured ones to evaluate the
veracity of a correlation. In practice, however, owing to
some uncertain effects such as various kinds of shear in
pipe flow on the non-Newtonian fluids, measurement
error of friction loss may increase. Thereby acquirement
of precise test data is difficult. Considering that the 14
friction factor equations in Table 1 are empirical or
semi-empirical, and that the prediction data of each
equation quite agree with individual own experimental
data, the f value (the mean value of all the f values
calculated from the 14 correlations according to the
given combination of n and ReMR) could be accounted as
description of the statistical rule of experimental data of
friction factors.
2.1 Analysis of f−ReMR relations when setting n values
Ranging of n from 0.4 to 1.4 and ReMR from 4,000
to 100 000, a given value of n and a series of ReMR
values were selected, and then the corresponding f and
f values from the 14 correlations were calculated. The
f-ReMR relation charts could obviously show the trend
curves of f vs. ReMR. For instance, Figs.1−3 individually
illustrated the f-ReMR relation curves at n = 0.7, 1.0 and
1.3, where the legends of Mean and Newton separately
represented the relations of f −ReMR and fNewton−ReMR.
From Figs.1−3, it was shown that the further n was
apart from 1.0, above or below, the more distinct the
non-Newtonian behavior of the power law fluids became,
and the greater the differences among the predicted f
values from all the 14 equations in each chart were. When
 GAO Peng, et al: New assessment of friction factor correlations for power law fluids in turbulent pipe flow 79

Fig. 1 f−ReMR relation when n=0.7

Fig. 3 f−ReMR relation when n=1.3

also indicated it was reasonable to choose the f as the

Fig. 2 f−ReMR relation when n=1.0
n = 1, however, the differences were the least. When the
given values of n changed from 0.4 to 1.4, from the
overall changing trends of f along with ReMR the curves
of fD&M−ReMR and f −ReMR were the closest. But the
fK&K−ReMR curves in Fig.1 and Fig.3 were apart from the
f −ReMR curve greatly, and were also the most irregular.
When n=1, ReMR=Re. Thus 24 values of Re ranged
from 4 000 to 100 000 were selected, and the
corresponding f values respectively were calculated from
Eqn.1 to Eqn.14. The fNewton values were also calculated
from the accepted Prandtl-Schlichting equation. When
compared with the values of fNewton and f in turn, the
predicted f values had distribution of MRD (mean
relative deviation) as showed in Table 2 in detail, which
comparison reference.
From Table 3, with n from 0.4 to 1.4, it was
analyzed as follows:
1) Eq.1 and Eq.6 were more accurate than the other
equations with the OMRD of 1.5% and 1.9%, moreover
0.4% and 0.5% smaller than 1.9% reported by DODGE
and METZNER[1] and 2.4% reported by KAWASE et al[8]
respectively. The results further made it validated that
f could be regarded as comparison reference.
2) In Table 3, Eq.10 was the worst with the
maximum of the OMRD up to 31.7%. Eq.9 also had a
large OMRD of 18.3%, which proved that Eq.9 had no
allowable OMRD for prediction of f.
2.2 Analysis of f−n relations when setting ReMR values
In order to verify the evaluation above, it was
necessary to analyze the prediction deviation of the 14
equations listed in Table 1 by studying the f−n relations.
As opposed to the calculation method in last section,
each ReMR value (all together 24) ranged from 4 000 to
100 000 (each corresponded to 11 values of n from 0.4 to
1.4) was given. The corresponding f values from the 14
equations and the f values were separately calculated,
and then the MRD and the OMRD of each correlation
under the fixed combination of (n, ReMR) were obtained. It
was found that some correlations had too large deviation,

Table 2 MRD of predicted f values from 14 correlations with two different comparison references
when n = 1 and ReMR was ranged from 4 000 to 100 000(%)
Equation Mean
CR value
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)
fNewton 0.1 1.1 1.6 2.3 0.0 0.4 3.5 8.3 2.5 1.3 0.1 0.1 3.3 5.3 2.14
f 0.3 0.9 1.5 2.1 0.3 0.6 3.5 8.4 2.4 1.1 0.3 0.3 3.2 5.4 2.16
CR=the comparison reference.
80 J. Cent. South Univ. Technol. 2007, 14(s1)

Table 3 MRD of predicted f values from 14 correlations compared with f when setting
a value of n and a series of ReMR ranged from 4 000 to 100 000(%)
n
Equation OMRD
0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
(1) 3.8 2.7 3.3 2.8 1.7 0.8 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.5 1.5
(2) 4.5 3.4 2.7 2.0 1.4 1.0 0.9 0.9 1.2 2.2 4.2 2.2
(3) 61.7 47.2 35.0 24.7 15.7 8.1 1.5 4.8 10.6 16.9 23.6 22.7
(4) 8.2 5.6 3.4 1.8 0.9 1.2 2.1 3.3 4.5 5.8 7.0 4.0
(5) 52.8 37.1 25.5 17.0 10.4 5.0 0.3 4.7 9.3 13.9 18.2 17.6
(6) 4.9 3.1 2.8 2.3 1.2 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.4 2.7 1.9
(7) 11.5 6.4 3.2 1.4 0.8 1.3 3.5 7.1 11.8 17.6 24.4 8.1
(8) 9.9 8.6 7.5 7.0 7.0 7.5 8.4 9.4 10.4 11.1 11.6 9.0
(9) 47.5 34.0 23.7 15.8 9.3 3.5 2.4 7.7 13.3 19.1 24.8 18.3
(10) 89.6 77.4 59.2 37.8 18.4 6.2 1.1 3.3 8.1 18.2 29.7 31.7
(11) 80.3 60.0 43.0 28.7 16.9 7.5 0.3 5.8 10.5 14.4 17.7 25.9
(12) 32.0 23.7 17.3 12.2 8.0 4.0 0.3 4.4 8.9 13.6 18.3 13.0
(13) 18.2 11.9 7.8 5.3 3.7 2.9 3.2 5.6 8.6 11.7 14.8 8.5
(14) 82.1 58.9 40.1 24.7 12.3 2.4 5.4 11.4 16.3 20.3 23.7 27.0

and did not accord with the monotonously increasing

trend of f vs. n by DODGE and METZNER[1], such as
fK&K, fS&M, fK&K, and fSKG. Fig.4 and Fig.5 show the
relation of f and n when ReMR=5 000 and MeMR=60 000,
where the legend of Mean represented the relations of
f and n. In a word, it is proved that the evaluation of
this and last section come to the same result.

Fig.5 f−n relation when ReMR = 60 000

the Dodge-Metzner correlation is the minimum, 1.5%.

Fig.4 f− n relation when ReMR = 5 000
3 Conclusions
This paper presents a new statistical approach to
assessing the 14 correlations for calculating friction
factors for power law fluids in turbulent pipe flow
ranging of n from 0.4 to 1.4 and ReMR from 4 000 to
100 000. The evaluation results show that the OMRD of
Grounded on the assessment from the statistical
significance, the Dodge-Metzner correlation is
recommended for predicting friction factors for turbulent
pipe flow of power law fluids.
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