The goal of this experiment was to determine the loss coefficients for pipe system components and the roughness values for straight pipes using experimental data. The effects of Reynolds number on the friction factors in straight pipes were also investigated. To perform this experiment, a pipe system consisting of two pipe segments connected perpendicular to one another with a 90° elbow component or a T-Bend fitting was used. Air was pumped through the pipes at a designated flow rate and the pressure readings along the pipes were recorded using taps connected to a digital manometer. The flow rates were determined from a set of three Reynolds numbers to be tested. For this experiment the Reynolds numbers of 15000, 25000, and 35000 were used to determine the flow, all of which were considered turbulent. From the pressure values obtained at these three Reynolds numbers the friction factor and roughness for the straight pipe as well as the loss coefficient for the bend fittings were calculated. The average friction factors for the 90° elbow and T-Bend configurations were 0.0242 and 0.0296 respectively. The 90° elbow fitting was found to have an average loss coefficient of 0.737 and the T-Bend was found to have a coefficient of 0.873. This indicated that the 90° elbow component is a better choice for use in a 90° angle setup as it had the lowest loss coefficient.
The resulting friction factors at different Reynolds numbers did not conclusively show how these values change with Reynolds numbers. The values did not generally increase or decrease with an increase in Reynolds number; according to the Moody chart, however, they should have
decreased with increasing Reynolds numbers. For the roughness, measured values were obtained using equation D.1 and theoretical values were gathered from the Moody chart. Error calculations showed that the results for roughness were acceptably accurate with maximum errors of only 13% for the T-Bend. The data also showed that the higher the Reynolds number, correspond to more accurate the roughness calculations, with an error of only 2.5% for the TBend at a Reynolds number of 35000.