Turbulent pipe flow of power-law fluids

Abstract This paper reports on the numerical computation of the turbulent flow of power-law fluids in smooth circular tubes. The turbulence is represented by means of a modified version of an existing two-equation turbulence model. Numerical results are presented for the fully-developed friction factor and velocity profile, and compared with experimental data. The model is shown to produce fairly good agreement with experiment over a wide range of values for the power-law index and generalised Reynolds number.