Steady flow through non-uniform gauzes of arbitrary shape

Abstract

The steady, two-dimensional flow through an arbitrarily-shaped gauze, of non-uniform properties, placed in a parallel channel is considered for the case in which viscosity can be ignored except in the immediate vicinity of the gauze. The equations are linearized by requiring departures from uniformity both in the flow and in the gauze parameters to be small. Knowledge of any three of the upstream profile, the downstream profile, the shape of the gauze and the gauze parameters, allows the other to be calculated from a linear relation between these four quantities. Particular solutions are given for the production of a uniform shear and the flow through linear and parabolic gauzes. The validity of the solution is verified by experiment. It is shown that the method can also be applied to two-dimensional flow in a diverging channel, axisymmetric flow in a circular pipe and in a circular cone and to flow through multiple gauzes.