Saving energy in turbulent flows with unsteady pumping.

ABSTRACT: Viscous dissipation causes significant energy losses in fluid flows; in ducts, laminar flows provide the minimum resistance to the motion, whereas turbulence substantially increases the friction at the wall and the consequent energy requirements for pumping. Great effort is currently being devoted to find new strategies to reduce the energy losses induced by turbulence. Here we propose a simple and novel drag-reduction technique which achieves substantial energy savings in internal flows. Our approach consists in driving the flow with a temporally intermittent pumping, unlike the common practice of a constant pumping. We alternate "pump on" phases where the flow accelerates, and "pump off" phases where the flow decays freely. The flow cyclically enters a quasi-laminar state during the acce

SUBMITTER: Foggi Rota G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9871000 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature