Roughness effects of commercial steel pipe in turbulent flow: universal scaling

Abstract

The mean turbulent flow over a transitional rough commercial steel pipe is considered in terms of alternate inner roughness variables. The matching of inner layer and outer layer in the overlap region leads to the universal log laws for velocity profile and friction factor, explicitly independent of surface roughness of all kinds. The roughness function, for commercial steel pipe differs from inflectional (sand grain) roughness. The traditional wall law and friction factor depends on type of surface roughness.