Secondary motion of fully developed oscillatory flow in a curved pipe

Abstract

Experimental and numerical studies were made of the secondary flow induced in fully developed oscillatory laminar flow in a curved circular pipe. Photographs of traces of nylon particles suspended in water were taken systematically with Womersley numbers α = 5.5 ∼ 28 and oscillatory Dean numbers D = 40 ∼ 500. The secondary flow velocity component and the location of the vortex eye were obtained from the photographs. The experimental results were checked with the numerical ones and the variations of the secondary flow pattern with the Dean and Womersley numbers were analysed based on both results. These results suggest that secondary flows can be classified into five patterns.