Turbulent flow in a pipe with intermittent rough patches: an analogue of annular two-phase flow

The response of turbulent pipe flow to sudden changes in wall roughness and flow cross-sectional area has been studied experimentally and numerically. Changes typical of those encountered by the gas phase in annular gas-liquid flow have been considered. The results show that the flow field and the pressure field can be significantly distorted at these transitions. Good agreement has been obtained between the measured results and those calculated using the Harwell-FLOW3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code.