Heat Transfer and Friction in Turbulent Pipe Flow with Variable Physical Properties

This chapter discusses heat transfer and skin friction in turbulent pipe flow with variable physical properties. The constant properties solution has been considered only so far as is necessary for the flow and heat transfer analysis with variable physical properties. The chapter highlights analytical methods to describe heat transfer mechanisms for constant liquid properties quite satisfactorily and to take into account the influence of the variation of physical properties with temperature versus heat transfer and skin friction in a number of important cases. Disagreement between theoretical and experimental results observed in other cases, in particular, with a considerable change in physical properties over the flow cross section, may be attributed to imperfect methods of estimating the effect of the variation of physical properties on turbulent diffusivity. Important experimental material has been accumulated on heat transfer and skin friction for variable physical properties. However, certain portions of this material possess relatively low accuracy that prevents its successful use. For a number of important cases, there has been no systematic data collection or that which is available is scanty and contradictory. Therefore, the need for further experimental investigations, with a high degree of accuracy, into the fluid mechanics and heat transfer for variable physical properties is quite urgent.