A NEW FRICTION FACTOR EQUATION FOR TURBULENT FLOW OF PURELY VISCOUS NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS

Mateus Getirana Ramirez¹; Cecilia M.M. Santos¹; Hamidreza Anbarlooei¹; Daniel Onofre de Almeida Cruz¹; Paulo Couto¹

¹ UFRJ

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0567

Resumo

The friction factor of the turbulent flow of purely viscous non Newtonian fluids is a parameter of great importance in many applications in chemical and oil industry. The accurate and fast determination of such parameter is therefor of great interest. As an example, a good estimation of the pipe and annular flow friction factor of Non-Newtonian fluids is very important in the design of the hydraulic program of a well under sand production scenario because significant pressure losses can develop in the constrained space. The knowledge of rheological behaviour of the fluid and methods of predicting pressure losses are of ultimate importance to estimate sand transport rates and avoid production decline in a normal operation of oil production. Some formulations can be found in the literature, which can be used to calculate the fiction factor of the turbulent flow of non-Newtonian fluids most of them however, uses implicit equations and involves some interactive and sometimes expensive process. In the present work a new explicit friction factor equation for turbulent flow of purely viscous fluid is developed, based on physical principles making it valid for a more larger application range compared with existing equations . The proposed explicit equation reproduces adequately the experimental data, avoids any interactive process and can be used to generate very precise and fast just in time numerical codes.

Palavras-chave: Turbulent flow; Friction equation; Fanning factor; non-Newtonian fluids