Pressure

Poiseuille's law, which does include viscous losses resulting in a lowering of the pressure as
you progress along the pipe. The statement of the Bernoulli equation above would lead to the
expectation that the pressure would return to the value P1 past the constriction since the
radius returns to its original value. This is not the case because of the loss of some energy
from the active flow process by friction into disordered molecular motion (thermal energy).
More accurate modeling can be done by combining the Bernoulli equation with Poiseuille's
law. A real example which might help visualize the process is the pressure monitoring of the
flow through a constricted tube.

Bernoulli calculation

 
Go Back
HyperPhysics***** Mechanics ***** Fluids R Nave

Bernoulli Calculation
The calculation of the "real world" pressure in a constriction of a tube is difficult to do
because of viscous losses, turbulence, and the assumptions which must be made about the
velocity profile (which affect the calculated kinetic energy). The model calculation here
assumes laminar flow (no turbulence), assumes that the distance from the larger diameter to
the smaller is short enough that viscous losses can be neglected, and assumes that the
velocity profile follows that of theoretical laminar flow. Specifically, this involves assuming
that the effective flow velocity is one half of the maximum velocity, and that the average
kinetic energy density is given by one third of the maximum kinetic energy density.

Now if you can swallow all those assumptions, you can model* the flow in a tube where the
volume flowrate is = cm3/s and the fluid density is ρ = gm/cm3. For an
inlet tube area A1= cm2 (radius r1 = cm), the geometry of flow leads to an
effective fluid velocity of v1 = cm/s. Since the Bernoulli equation includes the fluid
potential energy as well, the height of the inlet tube is specified as h1 = cm. If the
area of the tube is constricted to A2= cm2 (radius r2 = cm), then without any
further assumptions the effective fluid velocity in the constriction must be v2 =

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pber.html[13/03/2018 2:00:20 PM]