Determination of Pressure Drop and Flow Velocity in Old Rough Pipes

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the influence of irregular wall roughness of old pipes to pressure drop and flow velocity in Water Distribution Systems (WDS). Typical calibration of a numerical model of an existing WDS that contains old pipes is usually based on the estimation of roughness of the pipes using nominal pipe diameters. Due to wall build-up the shape of the inner pipe surface can vary temporally and spatially. In this study a series of numerical investigations are carried out using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software to determine the effect of irregular pipe diameter to pressure drop and flow velocity.

Keywords

• water distribution system
• roughness
• pipe diameter
• calibration
• CFD